Bob Herbert makes some good points about judicial nominations:

But the appeals courts, divided into 13 regional circuits, are crucial arbiters and shapers of the American way of life. How easy or difficult will it be for a woman to get an abortion? How safe can we make the food supply? What happens at the many intersections of the environment and commerce? What's up with civil rights and civil liberties?

Whoever controls the appeals courts has tremendous say over whose values will prevail in the United States. And no one has a deeper understanding of that than America's right-wing conservatives.

This is why I'm not about to indict the democratic leadership on their attempts to refocus the debate to the economy by whatever means are necessary so as to win the election. Even if the war in Iraq goes swimmingly, the Bush administration has repeatedly demonstrated that if they were empowered with a double majority in Congress they'd push through more partisan legislation and partisan judges than Americans have seen in decades.

I'm sure they wouldn't lose a wink of sleep about it. Fairness, representativeness, and consultation are for the other guys. After all, why bother screwing around with that sort of stuff when you just know that your side (neo-conservatives) is right and that the other guys are both wrong and evil? Even when "the other guys" are the poor centrists in your own party?