Frist Hangs On to Nuclear Option

Well, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. Our erstwhile House Majority Bill Frist has promised that the nuclear option (he cutely uses the phrase "constitutional option" - some kind of Newspeak, like the Repugs didn't invent the former phrase) is not off the table, and if the Dems so much as burp during the nominations of more of Bush's wacked-out judicial candidates, he's gonna drop the bomb.

While the arguing about the exact meaning of the compromise worked out by the Senate Gang of Fourteen (love those coinages) is going on all over the blogosphere and the editorial pages, your more non-intellectual members of the Senate are claiming that a literal interpretation is in order: to wit, if the Fourteen will vote 'up' for a couple of social morons like Brown and Owen, then they become the gold standard for judicial appointees, the bar has been set, and the Repugs feel free to nominate a retard to fill Rhenquist's seat when he retires or dies from thyroid cancer, due soon.