Liberals Against the Filibuster

OpinionJournal: The Senate debate about the judicial filibuster is under way, and Slate's Timothy Noah echoes a point made last month--namely, that the Democrats' defense of the filibuster suggests they expect to be in the minority for a long time:

"I never thought I'd see the day when preservation of the filibuster became a grass-roots liberal cause, but that day seems to have arrived. College students are staging mock filibusters at universities across the country. Once upon a time, student activists decried the immorality of the Vietnam War and U.S. investment in the apartheid regime in South Africa. Their protests helped change the world. Today student activists are defending a parliamentary rule that enabled southern bigots to block civil rights legislation for nearly a century! They're defending demosclerosis! They're defending the right of the minority to thwart the will of the majority! Oh sure, it all has something to do with bad judicial nominations, too. But the street theater isn't about bad judges. It's about Robert's Rules of Order. "