No one will accuse Richard Haass of being a softy on the United Nations. He is a Republican and has all the right credentials for this job.

Lamar Alexander has been a presidential candidate and had an absolutely distinguished record as a great thinker and policy hand. He speaks from his gut and his mind as a Southerner and American patriot. Senator Alexander has served as Governor of Tennessee, as Secretary of Education, and is now Senator of Tennessee. . .

Rita Hauser, a long-time international lawyer with great experience in the Middle East, is a member of the Board of Trustees of RAND Corporation, was appointed by President Bush to the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and co-chaired the Bush-Cheney re-election effort in New York.

TWN‘s list of “better choices than John Bolton” to serve as America’s Ambassador to the United Nations is growing. Here are the first few: Congresswoman Heather Wilson (R-NM) Former Congressman Doug Bereuter, who now heads the Asia Foundation Former Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming, my choice for America’s best no-nonsense tough guy. . .

I’m going to start mentioning names whom the White House should consider as outstanding possibilities with which to replace John Bolton’s nomination. I’m very high on Heather Wilson, who wants to be Secretary of Defense some day, I’m told. But this job in the U.N., at this time, would be a very good credential builder….

I really do like the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and read it every once in a while as I lived in Fairbanks for a few years as a child and visited there a few years ago as the President’s Lecturer at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

Andy Card is on the “White House is infallible” kick and thinks that all of the problems that are churning right now — from the issue of confirming judges and John Bolton to Tom DeLay surviving — are the fault of Democrats.

This ran in Al Kamen’s column today: In the fight over John R. Bolton’s nomination to be U.N. ambassador, there’s been a huge fuss over a speech Bolton gave in 2003 in Seoul, which some have suggested was not diplomatic enough and was out of sync with administration policy.

Newsweek‘s Mark Hosenball has a nice clip on what to look for in the upcoming NSA intercepts story this next week: Bolton’s critics are also pressing for details of requests he made for National Security Agency electronic “intercepts” containing the names of U.S. officials.

Some very interesting and thoughtful folks have emailed me today and shared with me their views on why they are so opposed to John Bolton serving as America’s Ambassador to the United Nations.