The battle over the nomination of Charles Pickering to an appellate court isn't about Pickering. It's about power

When the city of Norfolk closed six of its white public schools to prevent seventeen Negroes from attending them, ten thousand while children were deprived of education for half a year. In the article which follows, DR. FORREST P. WHITE tells what happened and why. The “massive resistance” policy, he points out, is just as surely compliance with the Supreme Court decisions as is integration; the real choice is between integrated schools and no schools at all. A native Virginian, educated in the South, Dr. White was the first treasurer and is now president of a citizens’ group organized to get their children back in school.

Dick Durbin wants to add a civil-liberties advocate to the court's proceedings and to limit the NSA's data collection.