Tom Bevan has a few things to say on the tantrum Ted Kennedy threw yesterday. His screeds and distortions against Robert Bork in 1983 worked, but he is now a defanged old lion relegated to watching Alito take a seat on the Supremes. Robert Novak agrees that Kennedy was "shooting blanks." Peggy Noonan sums it all up:

"But this one is all kind of over, isn’t it? It definitively ended when Mrs. Alito walked out in tears. But to me it seemed over on day one. The Democrats on the committee seemed forlorn in a way, as if they knew deep in their hearts that nobody’s listening. Two decades ago they could make their speeches and fake their indignation and accuse a Robert Bork of being a racist chauvinist woman hater and their accusations would ring throughout the country. But now the media they relied on have lost their monopoly. Everyone who’s fired at gets to fire back, shot for shot."