Democrats are in an incomprehensible rage over the filibuster. DON'T STOP READING! I AM NOT GOING TO DISCUSS THE HISTORY OF THE FILIBUSTER! Republicans have got to learn to stop getting into technicalities with the Democrats. They win in the dark; we win in the light. And it doesn't get much darker than a discussion of the Senate filibuster.

It's no excuse that the Democrats are lying. They do that all the time. Republicans have got to learn to let it go.

In one sentence Republicans should state that the so-called "nuclear option" means: "Majority vote wins." (This is as opposed to the Democrats' mantra, which is "Our side always wins.")

I am sublimely confident that normal Americans will not be shocked to learn that a Republican Senate plans to confirm the judicial nominees of a Republican president ? despite the objections of radical elements of a party that is the minority in the Senate, the minority in the House, the loser in the last two presidential races, the minority in state governorships, and the minority in all but a tiny number of very small but densely populated enclaves in this country that need to tax Rush Limbaugh, even though he lives in another state, just to keep all their little socialist programs afloat.

The question Republicans need to ask is: Why do the Democrats want to keep judicial nominees like Janice Rogers Brown and Priscilla Owen off the federal bench?

As I understand it, the reason Democrats are in a blind rage about Priscilla Owen is that, as a state court judge in Texas, Owen interpreted a law passed by the Texas Legislature requiring parental consent for 14-year-old girls to have abortions to mean that parental consent was required for 14-year-old girls to have abortions.

I think Americans need to hear Democrats explain that.

Democrats oppose Janice Rogers Brown because she's black. One cartoon on Blackcommentator.com shows President Bush introducing Brown to Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, with Bush saying, "Welcome to the bench, Ms. Clarence ? I mean, Ms. Rogers Brown. You'll fit right in!"

Let's see, what do those four have in common? Two secretaries of state, a former general, a former professor and a Supreme Court justice ... What's the common thread? I know there's something ? but what is it?

There's a whole array of groups opposed to Brown: People for the American Way, the National Women's Law Center, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the Feminist Majority, the Aryan Nation and so on.

But their actual objections to Brown are somewhat opaque. The Web page of "People for a Small Slice of the Upper West Side Way" contains a lengthy diatribe on Brown's nightmarish extremism while managing never, ever to give one specific example. In fact, if you take out "Janice Rogers Brown" and replace it with "Tom DeLay," it makes just as much sense when you read it.

This is what we get by way of explanation on the horror show that is Janice Rogers Brown:

• "ideological extremism"

• "aggressive judicial activism"

• "even further to the right than the most far-right justices"

• "prone to inserting conservative political views into her appellate opinions"

• "many disturbing dissents" Continued...