There was little mention of it on the news last night and only relatively short and buried articles in major newspapers on yesterday's confirmation hearing for D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Janice Rogers Brown.

Brown is a liberal Democrat's worst nightmare: a conservative African-American woman.

As usual, the best source of information on the judicial nomination "process" is National Review's Byron York.

In short, it doesn't matter what Brown's experience, qualifications or background is, who and what she is means she's destined for a filibuster.

In the end, what was striking was how little Democrats seemed inclined to dig into the actual questions involved in the cases Brown has decided; each time Brown delivered a crisp defense of her reasoning, Democrats simply moved on to another sound bite. It was as if Durbin and his colleagues had chosen to make a series of short-form attacks, get the hearing out of the way, and then move on to the more serious matter of filibustering Brown's nomination.

What the Democrat party is doing to the nomination process with these unprecedented filibusters could very well destroy the strength of the federal judiciary. Today, the Democrats bar anyone with conservative views from the appellate bench. Tomorrow, Republicans bar anyone with liberal views. The end result is a federal judiciary with a bunch of lukewarm moderates and little in the way of impressive legal thought.