Trent Lott just livened up what’s been a not overly riveting series of Senate floor speeches on judicial nominations by accusing Democrats with concerns about extremists nominees of having turned the Senate “into a torture chamber.” Given the honorable Senator from Mississippi’s enthusiastic defense of the administration when it came to actual torture, one can only assume that he indeed means that the Senate has caused pain “of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure” to Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown.