John Kerry has sent an email to supporters. There is a panic among the minority party that they may not be able to filibuster judicial nominees.

Imagine a world in which every appointment to the federal judiciary is tightly controlled by an extreme element within one party. Imagine the kinds of judges that will sit on the federal bench - even on the Supreme Court — if George W. Bush never needs a single Democratic vote.

Imagine the kind of decisions those judges will make on everything from civil rights to civil liberties to a woman’s right to choose and family privacy.

Republican leaders in the Senate have done more than imagine. They’re getting ready to force a Senate vote that would take a giant step towards creating that kind of America.

Senator Frist, the Senate Majority Leader, has a plan to make President Bush’s judicial nominations immune to a Senate filibuster. If he can convince enough Republican Senators to go along, the nomination and confirmation of judges will become a tightly-controlled, one-party affair.

We’re calling on Republican Senators to pull their party’s leaders back from the brink. It’s time to stop advancing a dangerous tactic that would deny millions of Americans any meaningful role in decisions vital to America’s future.

James Taranto comments, that even if the filibuster-proofing occurs…

But there’s no reason it has to be forever! If the Democrats won a majority in the Senate, they could restore the minority’s right to filibuster. Democratic Senate candidates in 2006 could run on the promise to restore the filibuster, and, if that proves insufficient to win a majority, they could repeat it in 2008. Sooner or later, it’s got to work.

Now, you might say, if they were the majority, they wouldn’t need the right to filibuster. But this is a matter of principle! It’s about the character of American democracy! Besides, it wouldn’t be the first time politicians ran on a platform that was against their political interests. In 1994 one plank of Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America was a constitutional amendment limiting the terms of congressmen.

Mary adds her thoughts:

Imagine a world in which every judicial nominee is given a simple up or down vote.

Imagine a world in which the legislators that the people voted into office had the opportunity to confirm judges nominated by the president the people elected.

…

I think the judicial nominees deserve a vote, rather than being choked by a “one-party affair” filibuster.

In other filibuster advertising news, Addison points to Ed’s analysis of the People for the American Way filibuster ad:

I suspect that Neas found the nearest thing to a Republican he could find to stand up in front of the cameras and mouth a script from Norman Lear. Unfortunately for PFAW and Ralph Neas, the best they can do is to get Ted Nonentity to front for their pathetic ad campaign. If nothing else, we can all get a laugh out of this absurdly earnest and richly ironic meltdown of PFAW’s credibility.