Read the Whole Thing

Howard Kurtz's column, that is. It's a roundup of the initial response on the blogosphere and from lobby-dom to the Roberts nomination. I think that he'll be confirmed, but not without every liberal pressure group cracking the whip over their senators. David Brooks describes what's ahead of us:

Confirmation battles have come to seem of late like occasions for bitterly divided Catholics to turn political battles into holy war Armageddons. Most of the main Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are Catholics who are liberal or moderate (Kennedy, Biden, Durbin, Leahy), and many of the most controversial judges or nominees are Catholics who are conservative (Scalia, Thomas, Pryor). When they face off, you get this brutal and elemental conflict over the role morality should play in public life.

This coming clash and carnival of viciousness is the best evidence I can think of for confirming people like John Roberts to the Supreme Court, where they will, I hope, round up the wild horses and put them back in the barn. The existence of groups who use litigation as a form of politics is dangerous to our republic. They thrive on pseudo-intellectual causes and arguments, but their real effect is to force their fews on the rest of us with authority that is practically unlimited, unless we put people like Roberts in charge. He should be Chief Justice. I hope that Bush will get a chance to appoint several more like him, gentle, patient justices who wisely and kindly refuse to use their Olympian power to nullify democracy.