Who Can Really Say?

If this agreement is worth the paper it's written on, then damn, that's gotta be some cheap paper.

Under the agreement, Democrats would pledge not to filibuster any of Bush's future appeals court or Supreme Court nominees except in "extraordinary circumstances."

For their part, Republicans agreed not to support an attempt to strip Democrats of their right to block votes.

Under the agreement, Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, nominated to a seat on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, would advance to a final confirmation vote.

I tried, but wasn't able to find anything I thought was really good vis a vis the Owen nomination, and by that, I mean something that wasn't from the Eagle Forum or People for the American Way. It's hard to find any wheat in the search engine chaff. But from what I can tell, Owen is opposed because of several TX Supreme Court decisions (she's a justice on that court) involving parental consent to abortion. There are a good dozen cases involved and Owen concurred in some and dissented in at least one, somewhat famously for the purposes of this fight. Those opposed to Owen, from what I can tell and suffice it to say, think she's not a friend to abortion jurisprudence. [Link via Outside the Beltway].

I'm working my way through to get a feel for what was going on in those cases but it's slow reading, and I'm not even sure I have the right cases yet. But so far, she doesn't grab me as filibuster material.