Apparently it was just me, but I was fascinated by the 39-hour Senate debate over Bush's judicial appointments. Monday Night Football puts me to sleep, but I watched C-SPAN for hours and would have watched longer if I had had time. Dunno why. It all boils down to a quite simple question: Should judges be required to get 60 Senate votes (the number needed for cloture) or just 51?

I thought Republicans were right on substance but the Democrats won on the hypocrisy issue. I can't see that the Democrats' tactics are unconstitutional, as some Republicans claim, but it is a safe bet that a half-plus-one majority is all the founders had in mind, and they were smart guys. It makes sense, too: It's better to have slightly-less-than-perfect judges hearing cases than to have cases languishing because nobody can carve out a 60-vote majority to get a judge on the bench.

But the Republicans may have lost points on legislative theater. They could argue, correctly, that there's a difference between a filibuster against an appointment (which they say they would never do) and a "hold" against an appointment (which they often did to Clinton) but it's a distinction that's lost on many voters -- and even on quite a few congressmen.

And not all Republicans were sure they wanted to win this fight. I heard Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., say on Sean Hannity's radio show that perhaps a dozen Republicans would rather keep the filibuster option open in case they need to use it to fight liberal judge appointments under some future president.

Moreover, Democrats capitalized on the extended debate to repeatedly draw attention to all of the things the Senate wasn't discussing: minimum wage, jobs, health care, etc. It was all beside the point, but I suspect it worked.