Do You Want to Play a Game?

Before there was a Ferris Bueller, Matthew Broderick played a teenager hacker who got access to an Air Force computer in the movie 'War Games'. This computer, programmed with elaborate scenarios for controlling the national defense system, greeted users with the question "Do you want to play a game?" Not realizing what he's gotten into, the kid begins a game called 'Global Thermonuclear War', and soon the missle launch sequences begin.

This image of people playing with options far more dangerous than they realize, and choosing to play with a 'nuclear option' that could quickly get out of hand, came to mind this morning.

"If someone would filibuster ... I would be prepared to vote to change the rules," said Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio.

DeWine is one of the 14 centrist senators that Democrats need to sustain a filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee. Without the group's seven Republicans, Democrats would not be able to prevent Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., from abolishing judicial filibusters and confirming judges with just the Senate's 55-member Republican majority.

Under existing Senate rules, it takes up to 60 votes to end a filibuster and force a final vote.

Frist said he's ready to move against judicial filibusters, using what Republicans call the "constitutional option," if Democrats force him to. "If a filibuster comes back, I'm not going to hesitate," he told 'The Tony Snow Show' on Fox News.

My reading of this is that it is an attempt to head off a filibuster before it starts, perhaps because they are worried about stopping one. However, voices on the left are already pointing out that, if you don't use a filibuster because you are afraid of losing the ability to filibuster, you've lost the ability to filibuster already.

If I were the Republican leadership, and aware of the way Iraq, Katrina and corrupt cronyism are playing with the public, I'd be worried that using a nuclear option would come back to bite me after the next election. I'd be worried that moderate Republican senators might find it in their interest to distance themselves from a hard-right nominee. I might be thinking that the smart play was to bluff the nuclear option hard early, and count on the Democrats to return to their habitual conflict-avoidance.

We'll see. Maybe Bill Frist will end up reprising Matthew's role, chasing around trying to prevent the horror he has set in progress from destroying the world.