Are the judges blocked by fillibusters victims of a "Fillibuster against Faith"?

[migrendel]

I don't believe these judges are being filibustered for being of a particular religious creed. They are being filibustered for holding certain views. All of these senators who oppose these judges have supported Catholic and Evangelical judges in the past. The distinction was that those judges had the impartiality not to allow their faith to affect their judgment of the law. But when faced with the likes of Bill Pryor, who does not see a difference between the concept of moral law and temporal law, the Senate is compelled to honor our Constitutional tradition of non-establishment and prevent him from doing a great deal of harm from the bench.

In another side note, I find several of the arguments rendered in this debate quite annoying. The Democrats invoke the mantra that these judges are "out of the mainstream". Do all judges need to be colorless moderates? After all, our judicial history has often been shaped by wise judges who adhered to a particular ideological stripe, and we are the better for having strong liberals and conservatives in our legal tradition.  Why can't they just say that they oppose them on ideological grounds, and this is a debate over the future of the law? Also, I find the argument that the filibuster is unconstitutional particularly odious. The advocates of this position claim that the filibuster requires a super-majority for confirmation. It does not. The filibustered nominees are all still properly before the Senate and only require a simple majority for confirmation. The only thing that requires a larger majority is the motion to end debate on these nominations. This argument is so unprincipled, so incoherent, and so out of keeping with this country's legal tradition that I cannot believe anything but it is an overt attempt to achieve a political end.