Editorial: Senate needs filibuster reform but not this way  In
the spring of 2005, Senate Democrats were in an uproar.
Republicans, infuriated over what they perceived as the
Democratic minority's abuses of the filibuster to block judicial
nominees, were threatening to deploy the so-called nuclear
option: changing the filibuster rules by a simple majority vote,
rather than requiring the 67 votes ordinarily required for a
rules change.  "The current Senate majority intends to do what
the majority in the Senate has often done -- use its
constitutional authority ... to reform Senate procedure by a
simple majority vote," Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.,
said at the time. If Republicans resorted to such a drastic
move, warned then-Minority Leader Harry M. Reid, D-Nev., "the
majority should not expect to receive cooperation from the
minority in the conduct of Senate business."     And Reid, now
majority leader, is threatening, when the new Congress convenes
next year, to deploy the nuclear option he once decri