President Obama supports many things he opposed as Senator Obama—such as unlimited terrorist detention—but for flip-flopping with a high degree of artistic difficulty nothing beats his judicial filibuster ultimatum on Tuesday. If Republicans don’t confirm his three, yes, three, new nominees to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, he’ll unleash Democrats to gut the Senate’s filibuster rules.

Mr. Obama didn’t explicitly state the threat portion of that ultimatum—he’s leaving that dirty work to the reliable Harry Reid. But everyone knows that’s the subtext of Tuesday’s announcement, which is a political attempt to realign the balance of power on an appeals court that has frustrated the Administration’s regulatory overreach.

The Senate has “a constitutional duty to promptly consider judicial nominees for confirmation,” Mr. Obama averred in the Rose Garden. “Throughout my first term as President, the Senate too often failed to do that.”

He might have added, but somehow didn’t, that the Senate also too often failed to do that “duty” when George W. Bush was President. You could even say that Senate Democrats invented the filibuster against D.C. Circuit nominees. Who can forget the successful Joe Biden-John Kerry effort to defeat the distinguished appellate lawyer Miguel Estrada mainly because he is Hispanic and might make it to the Supreme Court someday?

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