To my utter astonishment, Matthew Yglesias, a bona fide liberal blogger, is apparently willing to concede that maybe allowing judges to run roughshod over democracy wasn't necessarily such a great idea after all:

What are we gaining from having such powerful judges? A quick glance at the ugly confirmation wars tells us what we are losing. Are our fundamental liberties really more secure than those of Canadians and Australians?

To my even greater astonishment, the generally liberal contributors to his comments section have reacted, not with scorn and ridicule, but with understanding and even occasional agreement.

A cynic, of course, would make the connection between this deathbed conversion and the Republicans' near-complete control (apart from a filibuster or two) of the federal judicial nominations process. (Perhaps that's why Bush v. Gore didn't open many eyes on the left--at the time, liberals presumably still saw medium-term hope of regaining control of the appointments apparatus.) And in any event, the new status quo has conspicuously muted conservatives' once-virulent resentment of "judicial activism", as they contemplate the exciting new powers they may now be able to wield through their judicial proxies.

Still, a small voice of sanity is a welcome thing, no matter how insignificant its likely effect.