From the New York Times:
[On] late Thursday afternoon, [Senator John] Kerry began calling fellow Democratic senators in a quixotic, last-minute effort for a filibuster to stop the nomination.
Democrats cringed and Republicans jeered at the awkwardness of his gesture, which almost no one in the Senate expects to succeed.
"God bless John Kerry," said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican on the Judiciary Committee. "He just cinched this whole nomination. With Senator Kerry, it is Christmas every day." […]