sense of a.micability that the rest of the world doesn't share. >> david swerdlick, assistant editor for "the washington post," cnn supreme court analyst that covered the high court 25 years, and former u.s. attorney harry lipman who clerked for justice kennedy. now professor at uc san diego. joe, i want to tap into your wealth of knowledge. fair to say we have never seen a confirmation process like this. put it in perspective. spell out why this was unique. >> first of all, when you take all of the last century, most of the early supreme court nominees were approved on voice vote. it wasn't a big deal. going back 50 years, and we had in 1968, 1969, the flack where lbj tried to elevate a sitting