Just 18 U.S. senators mustered sufficient principle and courage to stand up and vote against ending floor debate on the nomination of right-wing proto-jurist Priscilla R. Owen to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

Seventeen are Democrats: Joseph Biden (Del.), Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Maria Cantwell (Wash.), Jon Corzine (N.J.), Mark Dayton (Minn.), Christopher Dodd (Conn.), Byron Dorgan (N.D.), Russ Feingold (Wis.), Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.), John F. Kerry (Mass.), Frank Lautenberg (N.J.), Carl Levin (Mich.), Blanche Lambert Lincoln (Ark.), Patty Murray (Wash.), Jack Reed (R.I.), Paul Sarbanes (Md.), and Debbie Stabenow (Mich.).

One is an independent: James Jeffords (Vt.).

(Source: The Washington Post.)

[Post-publication addendum: Don’t miss David Corn’s “The No-Nuke Deal,” the core of which relays: “[T]he Democrats did not walk out of the room with a hard-and-fast right to resort to a filibuster. With this compromise, they are only able to wield a judicial filibuster if seven Republican senators agree the situation is ‘extraordinary.’ In essence, a small band of moderate GOPers will now have veto power over the Democrats’ use of the judicial filibuster. Democrats and their allies in the judicial wars can point to the fact that one or two of the Bush nominees may be stopped and that the filibuster might be available in the future. But what they got out of this deal is more iffy than what the Republicans pocketed. True, they prevented Senate majority leader Bill Frist from pushing the button. But Ralph Neas, the head of People for the American Way, is overstating the case when he says, ‘This is a major defeat for the radical right.’ What has the radical right lost in concrete terms? One or two conservative judges.”]

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