J. Harvie Wilkinson III is a Federal circuit court judge, appointed in 1984 by Ronald Reagan, but he's never seen himself as a doctrinaire conservative trying to "storm the barricades." After Senate Democrats recently invoked the "nuclear option" and voted to ban filibusters for most presidential nominations, he outlined the consequences of that rash and regrettable action in The Washington Post:"The question for a great nation should often be: Will the center hold?" the judge wrote. That's a "quiet question," but one that "must be posed now."