"Going Nuclear" with Snarlin' Arlen in Possession of the "Football"

There's been quite a lot of talk since the election, and the GOP gains therein, about Senate Republicans putting that muscled up majority (which may be increasing if Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson either jumps or accepts the Bush Administration's offer to be Secretary of Agriculture) to good use by changing the rules to prohibit filibusters against judicial nominees.

Some inexplicably timid voices are urging restraint, which would be in essence to piss away the gains made in an election that was conducted, on the President's side, on the specific proviso of breaking Democrat obstructionism. Others, recognizing the opportunity to de-imperialize the federal bench that is before conservatives, as well as the greater loss to be suffered from the GOP betraying its own base as opposed to "alienating moderates," and the practical reality that only by "going nuclear" can Senate Dems be thwarted, urge moving full speed ahead, and firing torpedoes in lieu of damning them.

What I find interesting, particularly in light of reports that Senator Arlen Specter is winning over his eternally naive GOP colleagues, is that if, from the lib perspective, the backstop of Dem filibusters is removed, Snarlin' Arlen, as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, becomes the Left's last line of defense against the redemption of the courts.

Can anybody, knowing Specter's prickly, iconoclastic history, doubt for a moment that in those circumstances-of-a-lifetime he would not stick it up the President and his own party balls-deep?

If changing the rules is "going nuclear," handing the Judiciary gavel to Arlen Specter is like the warheads blowing up in their silos before they're launched.