At last, true diversity in the media. Too bad it's all at National Review. Byron York is offended by the accusation by Republicans that the Democrats who are filibustering Bush's judicial nominees are anti-Catholic, but Ramesh Ponnuru thinks they're right.

The facts that there are some Catholics nominees who have been approved and that some of the senators involved in this obstruction are nominally Catholic, do not disprove the charge. The fact is that anyone who believes that his/her religion teaches the word of God will be required to renounce his/her faith in order to serve as a federal judge.

The real problem with Roe v. Wade is that it stretches the Constitution to reach an issue that should have been left to the political process. By doing so, the Supreme Court has created a serious chasm between the Freedom of Religion clause and the Establishment clause. It has effectively established atheism and secularism as the state religion of the United States and chilled the rights of all Americans to express and discuss their beliefs freely. It's like saying, "You're free to believe and worship as you please, but if you believe in the wrong things, you may not become an appeals court judge." Questions to nominees about particular issues have traditionally been out of bounds, and rightly so. The only real consideration should be whether the person has a sound understanding of the law and is qualified temperamentally and intellectually to be a judge.

The other night I saw an ad for a PBS special about the Watergate Scandal which is inevitably called a great Constitutional Crisis. I never bought that, because Nixon got caught. The more serious crises are those that aren't recognized until years afterward, and are immensely hard to revisit.