The bad news for conservatives is that Senate Republicans don't have the numbers to block the Obama administration's judicial nominees. They can frustrate the process for a time with filibuster maneuvers, but in the end, President Obama will be able to fill the federal bench with nominees as liberal as he can find.

The good news, so far, is that Obama has not been particularly diligent in making nominations. After his first 10 months in office, only five judges had been confirmed by the Senate, says the Washington Independent, 22 nominees remained pending and 97 vacancies were still open. During George W. Bush's first year in office, the president had nominated 64 judges and won confirmation of 18 by mid-November.

Those are the lessons from this week's debacle featuring Indiana Judge David Hamilton's nomination to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

Many Republicans, led by Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., called Hamilton a liberal, activist judge, citing mostly two decisions - one to forbid sectarian prayer in the Indiana House and the other striking down a law requiring women to have face-to-face counseling before getting an abortion. They tried to mount a filibuster, and Democrats needed 60 votes to stop the debate and get a full floor vote. They had little trouble after Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar broke ranks to support Hamilton. They got 70 votes, including those of five Republicans. His confirmation to the bench is now all but assured.

All the Republicans who participated in this filibuster were strongly opposed on philosophic grounds to the practice of filibuster when the Democrats were using it to stop President Bush's nominees. And all the Democrats so against the practice now enthusiastically practiced it before. They all sound like a bunch of shameless hypocrites.

That's what they are, and they don't care. The stakes are too high.

Top federal judges, saying their workload is too heavy, have asked Congress to create 63 new federal judgeships. And judges today take on far more than the founders of this country envisioned. Obama - either over the next three years or the next seven - has the power to drastically alter the bench and, therefore, the future of this country.

And Republicans, at least for now, can't stop him. Elections have consequences.