Maybe the squishy Republicans and the turncoats are right: we need to retain the judicial filibuster.

After all, imagine where we would have been if we had not had the judicial filibuster under Clinton. We would have been forced to allow nominees like Richard Paez to be confirmed with fewer than 60 votes.

If we had allowed Paez to become a Ninth Circuit judge, he might have screwed up all sorts of things. For example, he might have unnecessarily injected himself into the California recall election by signing on to a blatantly ridiculous opinion that badly misreads Bush v. Gore.

Thank God we had the judicial filibuster around so we didn’t have to go through that.