Senate Democrats have destroyed the confirmation process; Republicans should try the Democrats' tactics to return the Supreme Court to the original meaning and purpose of the Constitution.

The Senate should cut a deal that allows face saving on both sides but backs away from the bad precedents of judicial filibusters and their abolition.

The filibuster returns to Congress in the form of Senate majority leader Bill Frist's multipronged effort to fire warning shots on judicial nominations across the Democrats' Senate ship.

Many Republicans are now arguing that filibusters against judicial nominations are unconstitutional on their face voted at least once against cloture.

The satisfaction from the show of bipartisanship on the Eisen confirmation lasted a good five minutes.

In the past couple of weeks, people who care about American politics and about Congress have lost two important figures: Harry McPherson and James Q. Wilson.

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) did not employ the nuclear option or go nuclear, as many headlines and stories suggested. He did not use an unprecedented ploy to challenge the filibuster or in any real way change Senate rules by majority vote. What Reid employed was closer to a firecracker than a nuke.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.