Filibuster is certainly an odd-sounding term. Its synonym, killdrivelling sounds like a Joe Biden speciality. An examination of it's 19th century etymological origins add a bit of color to our mental construct of the term :

The term "filibuster" was first used in 1851. It was derived from the Spanish filibustero, which translates as "pirate" or "freebooter." This term had evolved from the French term, filibustier, which itself evolved from the Dutch term, vrijbutier (freebooter.) This term was applied at the time to American adventurers, mostly from Southern states, who sought to overthrow the governments of Central American states. Later the term was applied to users of the filibuster, which was used as a tactic for pirating or hijacking debate."

Would that we had a swashbuckler or two amongst the current crop of obsequious Republicans tip-toeing around Barack Obama's nomination of the ultimate red-diaper baby, Elena Kagan, to the SCOTUS. Representative Ted Poe (R-2nd District TX) sums up Kagan's utter lack of qualification for the bench succinctly at Human Events:

The new Supreme Court pick, Elena Kagan, has never been a judge. She's never seen a courtroom from the bench. She's never had a judge's responsibilities. Elena Kagan has never instructed a jury or ruled on a point of law-any point of law. She's never tried a criminal case, a civil case, or even a traffic case. She has not decided even one constitutional issue.....Kagan is an elitist academic who has spent most of her life out of touch with the real world and the way things really are....She has read about being a judge in books, I suppose.....Putting Elena Kagan on the United States Supreme Court is like putting someone in charge of a brain surgery unit who has never done an operation.

It seems unlikely that Republican members of the Senate Judiciary committee conducting Kagan's nomination hearing think any differently than Representative Poe about her obvious lack of experience. Not to mention that the former Clintonista hack has an inappropriate activist temperament ill-suited to a job requiring impartiality. With the Democrat's holding a seemingly inviolable majority on the Judiciary Committee, the possibility of Kagan being deservedly voted down appears hopelessly slim.

So where is the filibuster? Pre-committee vote polling suggests there are even a few Democrats uninterested in allowing Obama to place another unqualified leftist on the court. While a number of Senators have provided sound-bites suggesting their disapproval of this latest Trotskyite vomited up from the seemingly endless supply of them promoted by the Obama administration, none of them are willing to do any more than cover their own posteriors.

Apparently oblivious to the Senate Primary race in his own state that dumped incumbent Bob Bennett for his vote in favor of the the Tarp bill and generally playing footsie with the Democrats, Orrin Hatch assiduously asserts his opposition to Kagan, but says he won't filibuster .

But the possibility that Hatch's opposition puts the Kagan Supreme Court nomination in peril remains slim. The Judiciary committee should send her nomination to the floor with ease. Once there, there will be a procedural vote to actually consider the nomination, requiring 60 senators for passage. And while its tempting to think that the GOP could unite against Kagan, even Hatch will be voting in favor of cloture.

"Senator Hatch opposes judicial filibusters," his spokesman Antonia Ferrier told the Huffington Post.

Despite their woeful minority in the Senate, the current crop of Republican solons has held together fairly well in opposition to the leftist siege attempted by the Obama/Reid/Pelosi troika. A considerable nudge by the Tea Party movement and concerned conservative Americans has been necessary to remind our representatives in Washington exactly who it is that they work for.

Call, email, write and visit your Senator and let him know that we will accept nothing less than a filibuster here and a filibuster now. The Obamanistas are reeling from Big Sis's backtracking on TSA censorship, stonewalling on Eric Holder's racist Department of Justice policies, and Obama's new forced affinity for Bibi Netanyahu. Dumping B.O.'s dumpy Supreme Court nominee is precisely the message we need to send while we protect the composition of the SCOTUS for the next 30 years.

Ralph Alter blogs at Right on Target www.rightot.blogspot.com