Although Social Security is apparently in a crisis that gets worse every moment Congress doesn't work on it, the Republican Senate is diverting its attention away from addressing the solvency of the program to deal with other matters, namely ridding their chamber of filibusters on judicial nominations. To start off with, Jim VandeHei and Charles Babington of The Washington Post get to the heart of the issue in the third graf of their A4 story:

The president, who initiated the conflict by renominating judges whom Democrats had blocked during his first term and demanding new votes this year, is essentially guaranteeing a showdown that is as much about the power of the presidency as Democratic obstinacy, according to numerous government scholars. The result could be a more powerful White House, a weakened Congress and the possible erosion, if not end of, the most powerful tool available to the minority party, the filibuster, the scholars said.

VandeHei and Babington also deliver with a choice quote from a former conservative Republican Congressman.

"This is being done to . . . help a president achieve what he wants to achieve," said former representative Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.), now a scholar at the Aspen Institute. "It's a total disavowal of the basic framework of the system of government. It's much more efficient [for Bush], but our government was not designed to be efficient."

[...]

Edwards, a former member of the House GOP leadership, said: "Every president grabs for more power. What's different to me is the acquiescence of Congress."

Who are some of these judicial nominees that the President has proposed? The New York Times' Neil A. Lewis and Carl Hulse explain the background of Pricilla Owens as follows:

In the nomination of Justice Owen of the Texas Supreme Court, the most controversial issue is her dissents from court rulings that interpret a state law that allows a minor to have an abortion without parental permission in certain circumstances. In one dissent, Justice Owen said the teenager had not demonstrated that she knew that there were religious objections to abortion and that some women who underwent abortions had experienced severe remorse.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, a justice on the court at the time, said the dissenters' views were far beyond what the Legislature had enacted and amounted to "an unconscionable act of judicial activism."

Other justices also said Justice Owen and her fellow dissenters were putting their own views ahead of the law.

Despite the obvious extremism of some of President Bush's nominees (it says something when the very conservative Gonzales is willing to call someone in effect a judicial activist on the right), some Senators are still working to render the nuclear option unnecessary. But as The Hill's Geoff Earle reports, the two sides are not even close yet in their negotiations.

A long-standing effort to try to resolve the standoff on the judicial filibuster has yet to produce an agreement that negotiators can live with.

Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who has been holding talks with Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and other senators on how to avert a showdown on judges, told The Hill, “There’s not a deal.” Lott also said it wouldn’t be accurate to say that a deal is close.

Lott and Nelson have been trading ideas and concrete language that could be the framework of a possible compromise. But substantial differences remain that could be beyond reconciliation. In particular, the two have not figured out a way to deal with seven of President Bush’s circuit-court nominees who have been filibustered.

Under one framework being floated, four of these nominees would go forward and three would not. “How do you pick the three?” Lott asked, arguing that such an arrangement was unfair. He said that any kind of deal that left two female nominees “hanging out there” was unacceptable — a reference to Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown.

Lott said a better solution was to let all of the judges get an up-or-down vote, adding that there is at least one nominee he would not vote for.

I'm not certain that Lott or his fellow Republicans understand the concept of negotiations. Each side is supposed to make concessions. So Lott's offer to that the Democrats give in on every judge in return for essentially nothing is somewhat nonsensical. Luckily, Lott is not the only Republican working on this. Earle notes that Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter took a different tack on the issue.

Specter called for conciliatory steps and noted that Democrats were not planning to filibuster the nomination of Thomas Griffith, Bush’s pick for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

While Specter calls for conciliation, another high ranking Republican moves in the opposite direction. David D. Kirkpatrick has the story for The New York Times:

Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said Monday that the committee was considering the creation of an "office of inspector general for the federal judiciary" to watch over the courts.

[...]

To preserve the independence of the judiciary, Mr. Sensenbrenner said, Congress should not seek "to regulate judicial decision-making through such extreme measures as retroactively removing lifetime appointees through impeachment."

But he continued, "This does not mean that judges should not be punished in some capacity for behavior that does not rise to the level of impeachable conduct."

"The appropriate questions," he added, "are how do we punish and who does the punishing."

The Republican line is clear. Not only do they want to change the rules in the middle of the game by stripping the Senators of their ability to block judicial nominees but they also want to hire Ken Lay-like investigators with unlimited budgets to hound judges that don't toe their extremist line.

This is a battle for the American Democracy here, and anyone who tells you it's anything less is lying. Extremists within the Republican Party are clearly trying to undermine the federal judiciary, and if that doesn't concern you, I'm not sure what would. An independent judiciary is the backbone of our Democracy, and if it goes by the wayside, we will all be in trouble. So regardless of your feelings about the Democrats' dilatory tactics (which have been used by both parties for decades -- just ask Republican Senator Chuck Hagel or the Senate historian), if you believe our Constitution has worked pretty well for the last two hundred years, stand up for it and stop the Republicans from destroying the judicial branch.