Defectors were Landrieu, Ben Nelson, and Mark Pryor. More — lots more — on them later. Senators Lieberman and Feinstein — THANK YOU. Senators Biden, Boxer, Sarbanes, Rockefeller, Dodd, Obama, Levin, and many others — THANK YOU TOO.
We are waiting for the votes in the Senate requesting cloture on the matter of John Bolton’s confirmation to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
I just arrived back in Washington from New York.
If Senators fail to defend the rights of their Chamber of Congress vis-a-vis the White House this evening, then they will have spotty luck in getting other “evidence requests” filled by the administration. This story by Lolita C.
There is a diligent soul over at DailyKos posting segments of all of the Bolton speeches on the floor of the Senate.
Does it seem mind-boggling to anyone else that whereas the “Super 14” were so focused on preserving Senate institutions in the judicial case that they oddly seem to have little respect for that same issue in the Bolton matter? Dianne Feinstein has actually said that she may support cloture on the Bolton nomination — but…
During Senator Lugar’s opening statement on the very first day of hearings in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he established a three point test of the “fitness” of any nominee for a position when considering the nominee’s past record and statements. Let me remind readers what those three essential issues, in Lugar’s mind, were: 1….
Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff have a nice overview on how the NSA intercepts controversy is surfacing like a semi-concealed submarine in the Bolton debate. This story has been percolating for weeks, but few have serious journalists have looked at the triple layer chess confrontation that is being waged by multiple players in this process….
Senator Joe Biden also gave one of the many excellent statements on the floor of the Senate today opposing the Bolton nomination. His commentary was well organized, methodic, empirical and well substantiated, and seductive. This combined with statements by Dodd, Rockefeller, Voinovich and others has created a tangible momentum against Bolton’s nomination.
Senator Rockefeller, along with many of his Republican and Democratic colleagues, gave a compelling and powerful roster of reasons to reject Bolton and to encourage the President to reconsider this nomination.
