No one was more certain that the Senate filibuster rules should be obliterated to allow every judicial nominee to receive an up-or-down Senate floor vote than Kansas Republican senator and potential presidential candidate Sam Brownback. So it comes as a particular irony that the hapless senator spent October "holding up" the Bush administration's Western District of Michigan's federal district judge nomination--based on a news report that
the nominee had presided over a homosexual commitment ceremony for a lesbian couple.

The nominee--Janet T. Neff--was reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, when Michigan activists noticed an announcement in the New York Times that Neff had apparently led the Massachusetts "commitment ceremony" between Karen Adelman and Mary Curtin, together with a minister from the United Church of Christ. To make matters even worse for Brownback, both Adelman and Curtin are former employees of the Human Rights Campaign--a group promoting acceptance of homosexuality.

Experienced Republican operatives who had been around Washington more than a few years--and even those who hadn't--could have told Brownback and Majority Leader Bill Frist (RTenn.) that "holds" and threatened filibusters had been used extensively by the Senate GOP to thwart liberal nominations of both Republican and Democratic presidents. . . .

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