Monday, June 20, 2005

Will the President Go to Recess?   The chattering class, starting with The National Review a couple of weeks ago, and now spreading like a contagion, is promoting the idea that the President may make a recess appointment of John Bolton as UN Ambassador.  'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.  This outcome would have so many upsides for the Democrats (and America).  Most importantly, he's currently Undersecretary of State in charge of containing the spread of WMDs, at which job he has been a signal failure.  I have supported Bolton's confirmation to the UN in the past solely to get him out of this post, where he is endangering the lives of, well, everyone in the world.  He will be marginalized from the start as an ambassador who couldn't even get Senate approval.  Also, as the recess-appointed Ambassador to the UN, he would be under greater scrutiny than any UN Ambassador before.  John Bolton has a record of threatening, yelling, blustering, and acting as a stooge for major corporations.  This sort of behavior only works in the shadows.  If he steps into the light and behaves the same way, he will be yet another proof that the Bush foreign policy establishment is just a gang that can't shoot straight.  And then, a recess appointment only lasts for a year, at which point, Bolton would come up again for confirmation by the US Senate.  He will be tainted by his behavior and lack of accomplishments, and any Republican Senator who votes to confirm him can have that vote hung around his neck. If the President uses a recess appointment on John Bolton, I strongly suspect that Bolton will announce his retirement in one year's time, so he can pursue other interest.  Maybe he'll put together a coffee table book of people with weird-looking facial hair. 7:59:53 PM    comment []

Final Results in Lebanon:  No to Syria   This weekend saw a stunning victory for the multi-religious, multi-ethnic opposition in Lebanon's elections.  This Saturday saw the final round of elections held regionally in Lebanon to decide the make-up of the next Lebanese parliament.  The northern region had historically been politically dominated by a group of pro-Syrian feudal families which had recently allied with General Aoun, a Maronite Christian whose popularity is largely based on his 15-year exile.  They were expected to do well enough to prevent Saad Hariri's coalition from winning an outright majority in parliament.  Instead, the voters support for Hariri and company, and the rejection of their historic leadership, proved nearly absolute:  they won all 28 of the 28 available legislative seats, thus securing 72 of the total 128 parliamentary seats. Hariri's coalition is composed of Druze, Maronite Christians, and Sunni Moslems.  This is the first time a multi-religious political coalition has run together and won election anywhere in the Middle East.  Saad Hariri is the son of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister whose assassination led to massive rallies and the withdrawal of Syrian forces after nearly thirty years of Syrian occupation.  The Hezbollah, political clients of both Syria and Iran, emerged as a more potent political force in this election, winning all 28 seats in Shiite-dominated south Lebanon, more than doubling their representation in parliament (with allies elsewhere in Lebanon, they control 35 seats).  Their illegal paramilitary force is considered at least the equal of the Lebanese national army. 3:11:32 PM    comment []

The Party of No (A Reprise)     More and more, it looks like the Democrats are starting to package rejection of the entire Republican wish-list of policies as an agenda of their own.  This is by no means a mistake.  In the latest CBS/New York Times poll, only 19% of Americans believed that Congress shared their priorities. Any time you can stake out a position that 81% of Americans agree on, there's a decent chance you may be on the right track.  And there's plenty of stuff to campaign against:  the bankruptcy bill that will cost millions of lower and middle-class Americans their only hope of getting out of debt, while at the same time allowing the rich to protect their assets if they get in financial trouble.  There's the Schiavo mess, where the House and the Senate both said that a husband should not have a say in his wife's medical treatment.  There's the House leadership's refusal to let the Ethics committee do its work.  There's the White House's fight to sink the Social Security program under trillions of dollars of new unpaid mandates.  There's the effort to pack the courts, the last generally respected branch of government, with extremist right-wing judicial activists.  (Both Priscilla Owens and Janice Rogers Brown earned much of their credit with conservatives by authoring "legal" rulings that completely ignored the Constitution and state law.)  And coming up is whatever plan the President will cook up (emphasis on "cook") on taxes.  Also, there's an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq which we now know, courtesy of the Downing Street memo, that the White House always intended to fight, regardless of the evidence.  There's one thing all of these policies the Democrats oppose have in common:  a solid majority of Americans is against them. This is enough, this is more than enough, to give candidates ammunition to persuade the voters that the best thing they can do is throw the Republicans out of office. 9:09:43 AM    comment []

President Calls Female Staff Lawyer a Dog   In a New York Times article yesterday, it was revealed that, in the unlikely case of a Supreme Court vacancy opening up this year, any confirmation battle would be run out of the office of the White House counsel, Harriet Miers, who the President has described in the past as "a pit bull in size 6 heels".  It is not clear if he was referring to a tendency on her part to drool, or if he thinks she has a scrunched-up face, or else a fondness for tearing out babies' throats, though certainly all would be invaluable characteristics during a contentious Senate confirmation battle. 6:16:15 AM    comment []

Quote for the Day, 6/20/2005   "This is one of those days that the pages of history teach us are best spent lying in bed."   -Roland Young (Uncle Willie), The Philadelphia Story   One of the movies that made me a movie snob.  This movie is just filled with lines I love. 5:00:30 AM    comment []