Kathryn, Mark, you never heard such talk from me on the deal, and I speak as perhaps the earliest and stoutest (no jokes, please) defender of the deal from a Machiavellian perspective. The spin about the deal — that it was a wonderful event because it brought new comity to the Senate — was nonsense, of course. This is a deal about whether the nuclear option was going to be pulled in relation to judicial filibusters. The ability of two of the seven Republicans to end the deal if Dems claim the right to filibuster a judicial nominee remains in place. The Bolton matter really is separate. In fact, you might say that a Bolton filibuster strengthens the Republican hand when it comes to future judicial nominees, because Dems really can’t just continue to use the filibuster at will without suffering grievous political harm. The filibuster works to the extent that the public doesn’t really know or understand what’s going on. A high-profile filibuster is the sort of thing you can only do once before the public realizes the minority is simply making it impossible for there to be a simple majority vote.