"Nice guy? I don’t give a shit. Good father? Fuck you, go home and play with your kids."

I missed this part of the debate, but I’m glad that Patty Murray gave the appropriate response to Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s interminable blubbering about what a great person Priscilla Owen is:

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, pleaded for Justice Owen’s confirmation on the Senate floor, reciting a long list of achievements and civic works, including Justice Owen’s serving as a Sunday school teacher to preschoolers.

That drew a quick retort from Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, who said she met with Justice Owen on Tuesday at Ms. Hutchison’s request.

“This is not a debate about a lovely person,” Ms. Murray said. “This is a debate about a record and judicial decisions, and about whether or not that record merits promoting someone to a lifetime appointment.”

Yes, exactly. Obviously, in the grand scheme of things being a kind and generous person and good parent and community leader are more important that the content of one’s jurisprudence. But Owen is not being appointed a national Sunday school teacher. She’s receiving a lifetime appointment as a federal judge. This is a (trivial, of course) manifestation of the way in which the Bork nomination–in which a nominee was rejected on explicitly substantive grounds–has come to stood for a bad nomination process, when in fact the Bork nomination was how the process should work. The actual title should bestowed on something like the Thomas nomination, in which legitimate substantive complaints were wrapped in personality issues that, in all candor, were of pretty underwhelming importance. An appointment to the federal bench isn’t a gold star one receives for being a nice person.

In other nuclear option-related news, Bill Frist is a baldfaced liar:

In his opening remarks, Dr. Frist said Democrats had “radically” altered the traditions of the Senate by blocking votes on 10 of 45 appeals court candidates put forward by Mr. Bush. Even as a bipartisan group of senators sought to head off a climactic vote, Dr. Frist said the filibuster must be brought to a halt either by allowing the Senate to decide the nominations or changing the rules to ban such tactics. “We must restore the 214-year-old principle that every judicial nominee with majority support deserves an up-or-down vote,” Dr. Frist said.

This is just a flagrant untruth, even with the “with majority support” phrase added to try to distinguish the Fortas filibuster. The problem, of course, is that the filibuster is merely one anti-majoritarian technique permitted by Senate procedures. The blue slip and other committee procedures, absolutely without question, have prevented scores of nominees with majority support from receiving up-or-down votes. And Frist knows this. He’s just openly lying on the floor of the United States Senate. What will we tell the children?