Catherine Crier's piece on HuffingtonPost offers a great overview of the fight in Washington over the filibuster fight. You should lift your head up a little from the hypnotic Texas political scene to give it a once-over.

The real fight is not over the lower courts in the federal system, but instead, the ultimate prize--the highest court in the land. There is no question that President Bush will have the opportunity to appoint several justices to that Court during his second term. He has made his ideological preferences clear. Conservative justices arenâ??t enough. He wants jurists of a particular persuasion. They must satisfy the requirements of fundamentalist Christians, with a willingness to roll back the clock to a time where children prayed to Jesus in public school, gays were back in the closet and women were forced into back alleys.

Damn, that's heavy man.