<p>Well, this should be good, shouldn’t it. Send in a person who wants to demolish the place as a powerful adviser for its remodeling. Greeeaat…</p>
<p>Call me politically naive, but I think I’ll go against party lines for this one and follow the majority of the Senate on this one… people like…</p>
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<p><a href=“when%20asked%20if%20he’s%20%22less%20inclined%22%20to%20vote%20for%20Sec.%20Bolton”>quote=Rep. Sen. Lincoln Chafee</a> “That would be accurate.”
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<p>Not to mention, Colin Powell, Lisa Murkowski and a few other Republicans. Hrmph. Your thoughts? Bolton should be an… * interesting * figure as a… recess UN ambassador, shouldn’t he? At least the Roberts nomination won’t be as ugly.</p>
<p>Bolton would hold office until the beginning of the next Congress, January 3 (or so) 2006. He would not be called “interim.”</p>
<p>Mr. B, I agree. And that’s one of the thing I find wearily incomprehensible about Bush…he looks for ways to aggressively poke fingers in eyes just to poke fingers in eyes. If there’s a safer way and a lightning rod, he inclines towards the lightning rod. It’s part of a pattern of immaturity and bullying.</p>
<p>I case you forgot, you left wingers lost the Presidential election (not to mention the Senate and the House). President Bush is entitled to select the people he would like to have in his administration. At least President Bush is not picking people who take the position that its just peachy to give North Korea all the nuclear technology it needs, like a certain former Democratic President did.</p>
<p>You know, for all the “you lost the election” Neanderthals out there, you should really read Orrin Hatch’s account of the consultations he had with Bill Clinton about Supreme Court nominations and how that played out.</p>
<p>Isaac Asimov once wrote that it’s a poor atom blaster that doesn’t point both ways. Just don’t cry foul when the institutional and attitudinal changes that the Busheviks have implemented come back to bite you in the butt. Payback is a *****. I know, I know…you don’t think it will ever happen.</p>
<p>NYTM, sorry about the brain cramp, 2007 it is…I was thinking of the 2006 elections and then the January subsequent to.</p>
I realize you are speaking from experience. The democrats owned Congress for 40 year but screwed things up so badly, they got bitten in the behind by the American people. In 1992, the Democrats held the House, Senate and Presidency. In 1994 the Republican revolution started. Now all the Democratics own are websites to ***** all day long.</p>
<p>I find it quite discomforting that President Bush would use his flex-muscle in order to appoint who he pleases. Although he has the Constitutional right to exercise that particular authority, he should not exercise it for such an important position. Rather, we should bide our time.</p>
<p>Is the interim US-UN staff currently placed in the United Nations not good enough to handle the minutiae of everyday diplomacy? If Bolton wishes to be the “grand destro–” I mean, “reformer” and desires to go into the UN to demoli-- rather, reform it, then he can present his evidence as to how he plans to change the UN. The burden of proof is on the nominee, not the US Senate. Unfortunately, the Senate has to do all the legwork and the Bush administration refuses to hand over the documents necessary to properly evaluate the official’s credentials.</p>
<p>And I am definitely not one of the bleeding heart liberals you so love to damn, razorsharp. I’ve been a Conservative thus far, and still remain loyal to most of the party ties. President Bush’s conservatism, on the other hand, is something to reconsider. If he is the model representative of the Republican party, then that is incredibly troubling.</p>
<p>He exercises authority, yet, but there is a subtle collapse of the principles of democracy that we hold dear. Just because one holds the privilege to exercise such authority does not mean one does so. </p>
<p>I am stating this with the acknowledgement of the fact that Presidents Clinton, Bush (Sr.) and Reagan have all exercised this authority. Even George Washington (but his appointee was ultimately rejected by the Senate) did so for the Supreme Court. But we are at a stage when our international relations require reinforcement and buttressing, not a sickle and hammer to destroy the rest of what damaged foreign relations we have to this point.</p>
<p>And as Montesquieu once said, “a disintegration of government always begins with the decay of its principles.”</p>
<p>Without commenting on the election results, I still want the President to use good sense. The appointments should be made with the consent and advice of the Senate, and there is a long history of how these things are accomplished. A good elected official will realize their constituency is the entire population not just their loyal voters or the businessmen that put them there.</p>
<p>There is nothing new here, folks. Clinton used recess appointments 140 times and no one said boo. </p>
<p>Besides, since when is the UN ambassador such an important position? If you think it is, without the use of Google or some other reference, name the last 3 UN ambassadors before Danforth.</p>
<p>A. Peter Burleigh (I know his sister), Richard Holbrooke, John Negroponte. I’m missing a few of the actual acting ambassadors, but eh. (Burleigh was an interim).</p>
<p>tlaktan, i thought you were conservative. and btw, I feel that there going to be a bigger wave of terrorism in the coming months and years. what do you think?</p>
<p>I absolutely agree, Driver. I’m afraid that you’re exactly right. You’ve won a prize…any of the swag on the third shelf.</p>
<p>RazorSharp, despite having both houses of Congress for 40 years, during which admittedly they got too complacent…a horrible sin in politics, the Democrats did not ever:</p>
<p>– use mid-census redistricting to grab more seats
– extend House votes beyond accustomed practice so that the leadership could armtwist Members on the floor
– chip away or eliminate perogatives of the minority party in the Senate
– “bi-partisan” did not mean “smile, bend over, and do it our way”
– the balance between “policy” and “political” internal to the White House was never pegged to the “political”
– appointments to executive agencies, e.g., scientists etc., were not subject to ideological screening</p>
<p>Shrug. You’ve had the process transformed to your liking. Some of it, like the ideological screenings, I will never countenance, even when the Democrats come back to power. But some of it…well, you won’t like it nearly so much when it’s pointed at you. And I think that in your innermost heart it will never happen, otherwise you wouldn’t be so serene about it.</p>
<p>Oh, please, TheDad. Your litany of alleged excesses since the glorious Gingrich revolution (a scant 11 years ago) is dwarfed by the “40 complacent years” (is that a biblical reference?) during which the Dems ruled the Congress. For a report on “smile, bend over, and do it our way,” just ask poor old Bob Michel, the last Republican Minority Leader in the House of Reps. God bless him, I don’t know how he kept himself from going postal with all the crap he had to put up with. Like the current Dems, you grew up thinking the status quo was normal. Others of us thought the pendulum had swung a bit far. By my estimation, it will take at least another 15 years continuing on the current track to get back to a reasonable, normal, default postition. Then we can start worrying about the pendulum going too far in the other direction. Ebb, and flow. Relax and enjoy the ride. A democratic republic is a beautiful thing.</p>