In today's NY Times, George Mitchell offers a voice of reason to what has become a wildly overblown issue. Of course I'm referring to this filibuster nonsense. As always, I recommend the use of the Clinton rule: if Clinton were president, do you think this 60 vs. 51 majority crap would be getting anywhere with the wingnuts? They'd be ballistic. After all, Clinton's confirmation "hit rate" is nearly 10 percentage points less than GW's number. Given the wingers are complaining about 96.6% not being 100%, or about a 3% difference, then Clinton's approx. 10% gap (vs. GW) is huge!

Well heck, why didn't Mitchell and the rest of the Dems propose ending the filibuster back then? Because as Mitchell correctly states:

During my six years as majority leader of the Senate, Republicans, then in the minority, often used filibusters to achieve their goals. I didn't like the results, but I accepted them because Republicans were acting within the rules; and we were able to work together on many other issues. There were 55 Democratic senators then. We had the power to take the drastic action now being proposed, but we refrained from exercising that power because it was as wrong then as it is now.