*Is* David “Mr. Drone” Barron still on-track for Appeals Court nomination?

For the basic background, here’s what Ted Cruz’s office sent around on the subject:

“David Barron’s nomination underscores the danger of the so-called ‘nuclear option’ Democrats are using to ram through controversial nominees on strict party-line votes,” said Sen. Cruz. “The Obama Administration has been extremely resistant in providing information about its drone program, which continues with its refusal to disclose the body of David Barron’s government work.

“As a top official in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, Mr. Barron authored consequential memos that justified the use of drones to kill U.S. citizens that the White House has not made public. Without question, Mr. Barron shaped the government’s policies that are roiling the public today.

“It would be a grave mistake to confirm Mr. Barron without meaningful access to the documents he authored. Any Democrat concerned about civil liberties should have profound concerns here. The Senate’s decision to allow a person such as Mr. Barron to be confirmed by a bare partisan majority without any real attempt to provide proper ‘advice and consent,’ is in the long run an even graver mistake.”

This is what we call a ‘controversial’ nomination, in other words – and the administration’s biggest problem here is that one of the groups that has a problem with this is the American Civil Liberties Union, which would quite like to see the Obama administration’s briefing materials on drone warfare, please.  What the ACLU got was a promise by the administration to show one partially redacted memo to the Senate.  This does not sit well with libertarian Senators like Rand Paul, conservative Senators like Ted Cruz, terrified Red State Democratic Senators like – well, take your pick – and Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon, who is not the Senator from Oregon who may be in electoral trouble this year. There may not be 51 votes for David Barron, in other words.

You know, there really are elements to this nuclear option thing that have turned out to be a lot more entertaining than I thought that they were going to be.  I am thinking that Harry Reid may not have thought this scenario all the way through.