Those are the three Democrats who have gone on record saying that they will vote for Samuel Alito.

We may as well toss in:

Who have come out opposed to a filibuster, thus assuming a united Republican front assuring the votes necessary to make a filibuster impossible.

I’ve covered Ken Salazar enough times. I’ll mention that Mary Landrieu’s political base blew away in a hurricane. I’ve covered Ben Nelson enough times.

So I focus on Robert Byrd and Tim Johnson. And mostly just Robert Byrd. I do not understand Robert Byrd. For all his speeches during the run up to the Iraq War and beyond, waving the Constitution that he keeps in his shirt pocket, and running his mouth about the President’s usurption of authority… a performance that makes it easy to forget that he is basically a pork-hound of a politician (it is no accident that Senator Stevens of Alaska — he of the “Road to Nowhere” fame, in his melodramatic exhortations that if he doesn’t get his money he will quit the Senate — singled out Byrd as someone he goes swimming with on a regular basis), with an… um… shaky past (google image search Byrd, and you will see legions of homages to his stint in the KKK), for he was on the right side of history at a time when somebody needed to be on the right side of history.

And yet… he is casting his vote for the, quote-in-quote, “Unitary Executive”.

Et tu, Byrd? Et tu? So, fade to black Byrd.

Tim Johsnon? Back-bencher from South Dakota. Won his last re-election in 2002 by three-digits full of votes, late in the night as some Native American precints came through for him (standing atop Tom Daschle’s thin mantle, if you can believe that). The Republican Response to his victory was to accuse the Democrats of stealing the election and to subsequently work to repress the Native American vote. Make of him what you may. This makes no sense:

Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota said he had concerns about Alito on such matters as his “narrow interpretation of certain civil rights laws.”

“Even so, I cannot accept an argument that his views are so radical that the Senate is justified in denying his confirmation,” Johnson said in a statement.

But it’s the kind of silly putty you will hear these six Senators, save Nelson who’ll be whole-heartedly behind his vote, speak. Fun times ahead!

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