It looks like the Republicans are having so much fun being bullies that they’ve decided to extend the senate session even longer. Reuter’s story about the extension includes this interesting analysis :

James Thurber of American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies said he believes both sides hurt themselves as well as the senate with the debate, explaining the public sees “them all as too partisan.”

Thurber said he believes the public sides more with Democrats on at least one point — that time spent on the debate could have been better used on such matters as health care, education and the economy.

Democrats have joined Republicans in confirming 168 of Bush’s other judicial nominees, dropping the bench’s vacancy rate to below 5 percent, its lowest level in more than a decade.

Sheldon Goldman, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, said Republicans have been “extremely successful” in confirming Bush’s nominees. “But what Republicans would love Democrats to do is to roll over and play dead so they can confirm all of them.”

So the only real complaint the the GOP has is that the Democrats haven’t accepted all of their judicial candidates? What assholes….