Reuters’ write-up of the most recent Bolton events is a fairly good one, both as a wrap-up of the Sunday shows and as a decent overview of where things stand overall. I must say, I was disheartened at the half-hearted opposition of Democratic senators today: both Dodd on “Fox News Sunday” (write-up here, transcript here) and Lieberman on “Late Edition” (transcript here) seemed basically resigned to the fact that Bolton will get a recess appointment, and neither took the opportunity to bring up the new revelations about Bolton’s failure to disclose to the Foreign Relations Committee that he was interviewed by the State Department’s inspector general back in 2003.
All reports seem to point toward a recess appointment for Bolton sometime during the early part of the week, prior to President Bush’s departure for Crawford on Tuesday. Since there have been a great many questions about the use of the recess appointment power, its history and so forth, I wanted to pass along this from MSNBC, which I’ve found very useful for background throughout this process.
I’m not going to size up the many ramifications of a recess appointment yet… the deed is not done, and there will be ample time for discussion after the fact if and when the president takes that step. For now, we cannot let up: we must make perfectly clear that no member of the Senate, Republican or Democrat, Bolton proponent or opponent, should sit quietly by and let a presidential nominee get away with submitting an untruthful disclosure form to the Senate. “I forgot” is hardly an adequate defense for such a serious omission, and no senator, no American, should be satisfied with it.
In the next couple of days, we should finally have a resolution to this months-long saga. Regardless of the final outcome, all of us who have opposed this ill-chosen nominee should remember that we have stood for truth, for honor, for reform, and for the best interests of America and our relations with the world.
— Jeremy Dibbell (Charging RINO)
