"One way or another, the filibuster of judicial nominees must end. The Senate must do what is good, what is right, what is reasonable and what is honorable."

"This filibuster is nothing less than a formula for tyranny by the minority," said the Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, in a speech to the Federalist Society in November 2004.

In 2003, the Senate Rules Committee had had a plan to "gradually lower the threshold for filibusters against judicial nominees until a simple majority would allow a final vote."

Senator Trent Lott, the Mississippi Republican who is chairman of the Rules Committee, has been among the Republicans who have also suggested that the Republicans try to win a change by seeking a ruling from the chairman, a position that a Republican would hold, that filibusters against executive nominations are unconstitutional. A favorable ruling would require just a majority to uphold.

Some Republicans have been reluctant to try that maneuver. They call it the nuclear option, because it could come back to haunt them if they are in the minority. Democrats have also threatened to tie up the Senate in knots if they lose their right to filibuster in that manner.

"To implement it would make the last Congress look like a bipartisan tea party," Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who is on the Judiciary Committee, said. "For the sake of country and some degree of comity, I would hope and pray that the majority leader would not take away the Senate's time-honored, 200-year-old tradition."

Ha ha. Great old quotes. I especially love the expression "tea party."

Who knew, back then, how much things would flip in the next decade, including the connotations of "tea party"?

Here's what Schumer said yesterday when the Democrats, by simple majority vote, abolished the filibuster for presidential nominees: "The age-old rules of the Senate are being used to paralyze us.... The public is asking – is begging – us to act."

Here's another old article on the Democrats intense opposition to what they just did. This one is from 2005:

"This is the most radical notion we've heard...," Senator Reid said.... "...

Senator Charles E. Schumer... "The nuclear option is really like making the Senate a banana republic," he said.

And here's a NYT editorial in April 2003 recommending that Democrats filibuster judicial nominees:

Filibustering [Priscilla] Owen's confirmation would send the Bush administration two important messages: the president must stop packing the courts with ideologues, and he must show more respect for the Senate's role....

It is not by chance that the Senate is being asked to confirm someone with these views. The White House has culled the legal profession to find nominees with aggressive conservative agendas....

The filibuster is not a tool to be used lightly. But the Senate has been right to use it against the nomination of Miguel Estrada, who is hiding his views on legal issues. It should do the same to stop the once-rejected Judge Owen, and tell extreme conservatives in the Bush administration to stop trying to hijack the federal judiciary.

Obviously, today's Republicans take the same tone over Obama's nominees — they are extreme and aggressive in their liberal agendas.

Here's another NYT editorial, this one from 2005:

Republicans seem determined to change the rules so Democrats will no longer be able to stop judicial nominations with the threat of a filibuster. If they're acting out of frustration, it's understandable....

But the sense that there are certain rules that all must play by, whether to their advantage or not, is something that cannot be restored. Senators need only to look at the House to see what politics looks like when the only law is to win at any cost.

The Senate, of all places, should be sensitive to the fact that this large and diverse country has never believed in government by an unrestrained majority rule. Its composition is a repudiation of the very idea that the largest number of votes always wins out.....

A decade ago, this page expressed support for tactics that would have gone even further than the "nuclear option" in eliminating the power of the filibuster. 

That is, the NYT had favored eliminating the filibuster during the Clinton administration, but somehow, with Bush as President, they could see that they were wrong.

We hope acknowledging our own error may remind some wavering Republican senators that someday they, too, will be on the other side and in need of all the protections the Senate rules can provide.

And when that day comes, will the NYT see that seeing that they were wrong was itself wrong? Well, here's today's editorial in the NYT, "Democracy Returns to the Senate." Too funny.