A Compromised Party Kills the Constitution.

As usual, Thomas Sowell cuts thru the bovine excrement and explains why the pathetic surrender of the Stupid Party attention whores matters.

Although the Republicans have more votes in the Senate, and also have Vice-President Cheney to cast the deciding vote in case of a tie, the Democrats stuck together. None of them went around wringing their hands in the media about how hard it would be for them to support their party if it came to a vote.

This is not a unique situation. Democrats have long understood that they are in Washington to represent the people who voted for them. Too many Republicans seem to think that they are in Washington to make deals with the Democrats.

Some people welcome all compromises, domestic or international, on grounds that these compromises "ease tensions" and "avoid confrontations."

You can always ease tensions and avoid confrontations by surrendering. You can always postpone a showdown, even when that simply lets the problem fester and grow worse.

While members of both parties are trying to put a good face on this political deal and the media have gushed about this "bipartisan" agreement, Republican Senator Charles Grassley was one of the few who called a spade a spade, when he characterized what happened as "unilateral disarmament" by the Republicans.

If it was just the Republican Party that lost in this confrontation, that would be a minor partisan matter. What is of major importance is that the American people lost a golden opportunity that may not come again in this generation.

That opportunity is -- or was -- to set in concrete both the Senate's right to vote on judicial nominees and the American people's right to govern themselves, instead of being ruled by judges who increasingly take decisions out of the hands of elected officials and impose their own personal policy preferences.

It is not just a question of the merits or demerits of particular issues and decisions by the courts. The most fundamental decision is: Who is to decide? Democratic self-rule is what Americans have fought and died for, for more than 200 years.

People who say that the Senate compromise will now enable Congress to get back to the "real" issues seem to think that whether the voters' votes become ever more futile in a judge-ruled world is less important than deciding what kind of goodies the federal government hands out.

Go read the rest of it.

I decided to wade thru Sean Hannity's repetitive yammering on his radio show last night to see how he was discussing this mess and he had Sen. Lindsey Graham and Bill Frist on and it was awesome to listen to these tools try to spin this as a victory. Sure, as long as you consider getting 3 out of 10 judges voted on and throwing the rest overboard AND leaving the option to filibuster and demagogue in the hands of the Dems a victory.

If there was any doubt that our small-D democratic republic is dead and we will be ruled by liberal judicial despots who will rule us by fiat with no recourse short of impeachment - something the Stupid Party has proven incapable of doing, even when presented with overwhelming evidence of malfeasance - it is gone now.

With Supreme Court (In)Justices like John Paul Stevens saying that it's appropriate to consider INTERNATIONAL LAW in reviewing cases - for those too brainwashed or poorly-educated to know, the SCOTUS is supposed to see if laws measure up to the U.S. Constitution, NOT what's fashionable on the Continent - it looks like the Constitution as we understood it will fade from memory and our rights will be determined by the elistist whims of a robed oligarchy.

But who cares when we're going to find out who the new American Idol will be tonight and people are concerned whether Shaq will be able to come back and stop the Pistons?