The Washington Post has an article in which senator Ted Kennedy and his Democratic colleagues explain why judge Janice Rogers Brown is unsuited for the federal judiciary:
You might think that judge Brown, an African American woman, shares a lot of common philosophical ground with Alexis de Tocqueville and other luminaries in the pantheon of great thinkers in political theory, and that such an individual would be an asset on the federal bench. Such a presumption, however, would put you at odds with Senator Kennedy and his cronies who have probably never heard of Tocqueville, much less read him, and who fervently wish to deny her the opportunity to serve precisely because she says things like this.
This is small-mindedness of the first magnitude. Because this judge believes that big government saps local initiative, a belief which one would think is empirically obvious to all but the most obtuse observers, the liberals are outraged. In their indignation that anyone would have the temerity to challenge the benefits of governmental micro-management they plan to filibuster her nomination, which will force the Republicans to change the rules in the senate to stop the filibuster and allow for a vote on her nomination on the senate floor. This in turn will provoke the Democrats, they've assured us, to shut down the nation's business.
Democrats are so obsessed with defeating George Bush's agenda that they're willing to sacrifice the welfare of the nation to accomplish it. This may turn out, however, to be an act of political self-immolation. If the Republicans do the right thing, stick to their principles, and stand resolutely behind the President's nominees, the Democrats' irrationality may ignite a blazing auto de fe which will reduce them to minority status for a generation. If so, it'll be fun to watch. No doubt they'll fuel the pyre themselves with never-opened volumes of Democracy In America.