Hail Mary Landrieu! The senator from Louisiana, during last night's filibuster, was a ball of fury, giving a speech that made all of the others appear lackluster. Though Landrieu said she would use "every minute" of her alloted half hour, she finished early, having said everything she needed to say in a focused and very angry piece of oratory.

Landrieu, who is always articulate and can be quite funny, was fed up with the phony accusations that Democrats don't want to put a woman or a minority on the federal bench. That, of course, is a ridiculous argument, and it had Landrieu going.

She read aloud a quotation from Judge Janice Brown that described the doom and collapse of society that occur when the government intervenes in people's lives, then she wondered what must have been the apocalyptic consequences of government intervention when Rosa Parks took a seat on the bus. She read another quotation that suggested older people were trying to sponge off of the government, and said it insulted "all the grandmothers of Louisiana, who not only raise their children, but sometimes their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren."

She told a wonderful story about Homer Plessy, an African American man in Louisiana, who--long before Rosa Parks defied the law--boarded a bus, knowing he would get in trouble with the law. The man had light skin, Landrieu said, and he was chosen for the task "because he was white enough to get on the bus, and black enough to get arrested."

Landrieu's finest moment came when she refused to yield to Orrin Hatch. "I will not yield," she said. He interrupted her again: "I will not yield." And finally--"I WILL NOT YIELD!" Hatch was then told that Landrieu had the floor.

I'll say.