Few have ever heard the name Debo Adegbile. He’s President Obama‘s nominee to head the civil rights division of the Justice Department.

A few months ago, his nomination would have been a nonstarter — there is more than a whiff of radicalism in his past. But we are in a new world. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is now absolute monarch of the Senate. Republicans are largely irrelevant. They cannot offer amendments to legislation. They cannot filibuster. I suppose they can write letters to the editor and march outside the chamber wearing sandwich boards.