One of the strongest cards that John Bolton had to play was sitting as the titular head of the Proliferation Security Initiative, a somewhat ad hoc coaltion of willing nations concerned with stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Arlen Specter (R-PA) gave an indication yesterday of what a battle over John Bolton might look like if Bolton’s nomination did move out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to the Senate Floor.

On the subject of loyalty, Hannah Arendt once wrote: Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally arise.

Today, CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer” ran another “Quick Vote” on the subject of whether Americans thought John Bolton should be Ambassador to the United Nations. 92% have voted NO.

The White House and some of the Senators who had hoped to quickly move the Bolton nomination through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee counted on the American public’s ignorance of Bolton and their relative disinterest in this post at the United Nations.

This morning in the Boston Globe: In a new allegation against President Bush’s nominee for United Nations ambassador, a woman who worked under John Bolton in the early 1980s has complained that he tried to fire her after they clashed over US policy on infant formula in developing nations. Lynne D.

Vice President Cheney does the nation a real disservice by confusing “serial abuse” with what he calls occasional toughness and abrasiveness in the John Bolton case.

Today is April 23rd, Saturday. Yesterday, major front page articles appeared throughout the major press that Colin Powell had entered the fray on John Bolton and apparently joined the “Bolton is Unfit” side of the equation.

I knew that the essential themes and players involved with the Bolton nomination had played out some time before. Sort of like a Shakespearean tragedy, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Pick up nearly any major paper in the United States today and there is a front page story on the implications of Colin Powell discreetly sharing his thoughts on John Bolton’s past behavior and performance with Senators Hagel and Chafee.