I’m on the road right now, and I’m grateful to the line-up of fascinating personalities who have agreed to help step in and provide their own thinking on a wide variety of public policy questions, as well as risotto recipes.

In a recent column in the Singapore Business Times (reprinted in antiwar.com), “The Unbearable Lightness of Being ‘Condi,’” I suggested that our secretary of state Condoleeza Rice is kind of a, well, lightweight, especially when you compare her to predecessors like, say, George Marshall, John Foster Dulles, Dean Acheson, and of course, Henry Kissinger.

Good morning, everyone. Joining our cast of bloggers today is Leon Hadar, a research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, a journalist, a professor, and a gentleman. Leon is the author of the just published Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

Since the White House has made noises about wanting a UN Ambassador before the United Nations’ session opens in September, they’ve created a phony pretext for the recess appointment — the time demand — when in actuality they’ve spent the whole summer running out the clock.

We all know that John Bolton has never seen a clearance process he didn’t want to subvert or destroy. But as Mr.

Greetings from the centrist Republican corner of the blogosphere! I’m Jeremy Dibbell, and I’ve been blogging over at Charging RINO since late March. One of the major stories I’ve been focused on since the beginning is the Bolton nomination, and I’ve been a very regular reader of Steve’s excellent commentary.

Greetings to the readers of the Washington Note, and thanks to Steve for the opportunity to guest post. To introduce myself, I am the editor of The National Interest (nationalinterest.org) and of its online supplement In the National Interest.

One thing that’s become quite apparent over the course of the debate on John Bolton is what happens when very capable and experienced people have tried to “supervise” him. When it comes to working within the system, Bolton doesn’t just push the envelope – he rips it to shreds.

Senator Joe Biden has sent a letter to Secretary of State Rice asking her to clarify whether John Bolton has testified before the Fitzgerald grand jury. (Thinkprogress has the text; thanks to snowbird42 in comments for bringing it to my attention). MSNBC reported that he has — and it is standing by its story.

Hello to all. I blog at Stygius, and I want to thank Steve for allowing me to guest-blog at The Washington Note while heâ€ââ€