Bravissimo!

damn! its too early to drink here. congratulations steve and team.

Congratulations! Good Job.

And a well deserved bottle of wine it is !

Enjoy & thanks for all the work you folks put into this

"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it." - Mark Twain

Thanks for your intense and dedicated work on this! And for keeping us informed throughout.

consider this a virtual click of my raspberry-banana daquiri to your glass of wine, steve!

good job!

Vote tally at: http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=1&vote=00142

lets not forget all the other awful candidates and terrible work to remove environmental protections, etc. these guys have going ... the bolton wins so far are tiny battles in a much bigger war that good guys are losing - badly.

lets do what needs to be done to defeat these clownies in 2006 - everyday until then... and then on to 2008.

HAHAHAHAHA.. the title of the top post at confirmbolton.com is "Voinovich.... WTF?"

A choice quote:
"To be fair, it could also be that Voinovich is a headline whore, and he perhaps calculated that he could garner still more attention by stabbing his GOP brethen in the back yet again. "

Republican cannibalism spreads debilitating political kuru; hence, I hope to see more and more of it in the coming weeks.

Newt Gingrich would be excellent, if Bush is looking for another candidate. He will do all the things Cheney wants Bolton to do plus he is a smooth guy, compared to Bolton, and has done work on the UN reform with Sen. George Mitchell.

Newt Gingrich fixed INTEL at the OSP every bit as much or more than Bolton did and a Gingrich staffer worked in another INTEL agency that parallels OSP's efforts to verify conclusive evidence.

He's no better than Bolton in this. But maybe he knows a good lawyer- John Edwards isn't too busy right now is he? he even stays at newt's old house,conveniently enough.

Newt can call up his old house, John sleeps in the same bedroom? Newt can call where his deceased wife lived in the same house and can reach him? Newt can call where his live-in girlfriend stayed at the time.

Silly me, they're all the same location!

Go ahead and and put Ginbitch through a recommendation process. We'll feast on the leftovers for months on the talk show circut. We can call his latest two ex-wives as character witnesses. Who is wearing the blue dress now?

Shortly after the announced vote, I pumped my fist ala Tiger Woods, and said: Great job, Steve!

Enjoy that glass of wine!!!!

Keep up the great work!!!

Have two.

Excellent work, Mr. Clemons, Sir. You've earned it.

Great work, Steve. Really. Keep it up. And thanks.

My question:

Did Condi intend to kick Bolton upstairs (and into a job where he could do less damage than he's done at State)?

They should still go after those documents, Bolton or no Bolton.

It sure was good to see -- especially since we picked up a couple of votes.

There is still time for us to slip into meaningless compromise territory, though. I really do not think the dems should accept Negroponte's word on anything. We know that Bolton has lied under oath, what's to say Negroponte won't lie as well? Nobody's going to be able to check, so, unless there's a leak, we will have no way of knowing if Negroponte is telling the truth.

I'd also still like to know the answer to one of your earlier posts, i.e., why did we have a cloture vote today when it was so obvious the GOP would lose? Sort of seemed like they were just going through the motions. Maybe an excuse for a recess appt? "Well, we tried twice and the Democrats were just recalcitrant!"

Excellent effort Steve. Thanks to you and your supporters. Now, having drawn attention to the lengths BushCo is willing to go to keep the Bolton docs under wraps, it would be nice to see some of them leaked . . .

Yah...leaked...by the same fellah who leaked the Plame name, eh?

On TV, on AMC (American Movie Classics) is "Casablanca," and right about now our side, in Rick's Cafe, is about to drown out the fascists with Le Marseillaise. Tune in and fill yourselves with the spirit, our spirit, knowing victory must eventually be totally ours over the War Criminals!

This Brit in Bangkok, Thailand raises a glass, lights 3 joss sticks and has a little puff..... in your honour!

It's a small world.

Jeez folks... calm down. If the administration turned over the documents requested there would be a vote and Bolton would be confirmed... You're getting awfully excited only because their reflexive obsession with privilige trips them up.

Steve, you might take a moment to read this post from the Cunning Realist. He has a legit question, and maybe you could ask it next time you speak to a source.

http://cunningrealist.blogspot.com/

And Thanks for all your hard work!!!

Any bets on whether the testosterone-poisoned Bush/Cheney gang will do a recess appointment? They don't seem to know the meaning of compromise or retreat; especially now when their 'mandate' is pretty much gone; think cornered rabid dog. We should prepare for another 'Pearl Harbor' event to get Bush's numbers back up, I'm afraid....

Does it take 60 votes to approve a recess in the Senate?

Hehe

oops,looks like more than one Nancy on here now.....for now I will put NancyB,Im the one thats posted here for a long time.....

ok,THIS time I'll get the name right!

Congratuations, Steve, on today's victory. But unfortunately I fear that the sole purpose of today's vote was to give Bush political cover to do a recess appointment over the July 4th recess. Otherwise it makes no sense, because they knew they didn't have the votes. Bush'll accuse the Senate dems of being obstructionists and the media, as usual, will not call him on it. Although you can argue that a recess-appointed Bolton would be effectively "eunuched" as UN ambassador, I fear that they don't give a sh*t because they have some diabolical plan (e.g., war w/ Iran).
CLM

And what do newspapers 'of record' do with this?
--The usual of course: tit-for-tat, he-said-she-said, R v D. OK so one side wants to wreck the constitution, so what??

Two intriguing bits from the NYT article though -

Shortly before the vote on Monday, Mr. Card placed a telephone call to Mr. Biden, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, and offered to share information relating to the speech on Syria, aides to Mr. Biden said.

..

Mr. Voinovich, who threw the Bolton nomination into turmoil when he opposed it as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said Monday that new information had "confirmed my belief that John Bolton is not the right man for this job."

This leaves unclear whether Voinovich talks about 'new evidence' since the last cloture attempt or 'new evidence' as in over the last few days..

and -of course- don't expect to hear as much as a peep about the fact that the WH could drop this radioactive nominee right now and replace him with fistfuls of other candidates that would be far better suited.

Wow, Steve- this is incredible!

Good work Steve.

Any chance that Bolton was spying on the State Dept for DIck Cheney and that the intercepts they don't want to disclose would make it clear what was going on? That is the type of thing that is not illegal, but certainly it would cause a lot of administrative damage.

Any thoughts that Bolton was not a loose cannon, but a Cheney agent on a mission to disrupt policy at State that was contested within the administration? Just asking.

It has been clear that the Bush administration has internal policy disagreements. Certainly, they have disagreements with some of the permanent staff and may have been checking to see who was with them and who was working unenthusiastically? Just asking.

This has been a Great Day. Not only has Steve Clemons given us a victory to savor; he has also provided us a model of inspired, savvy, and unflagged political opposition that has been sadly, tragically absent over the last 5 years, if not more. The Left (even the Middle) must take heart and, especially as the 2006 elections loom, learn from this unique model of blog politics.

Congratulations. And profound thanks.

Steve, a question for you:

Has anyone talked to our UN delegation - the permanent staff; the people who'll have to work for Bolton if he's approved or recess-appointed - how they'll react to having him as a boss?

Great work Steve. Now, as I said here weeks ago, Bolton goes to the UN as a recess appointment, which lasts until Jan. '07, but which can effectively be extneded until Jan. '09 (example: Bill Lan Lee), Bush gets to blame Dems as obstructionist, and the hand of nenderthals like Hebry Hyde who wnat to cut UN funding is strengthened.

I thought the foundation you were associated with was funded by SOros. Are you sure Rove wasn't calling the shots?

Fourth paragraph in the NYT article today by Sheryl Gay Stolberg:

"The vote was a setback not only for President Bush but also for the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee."

Then:

"Senator Pat Roberts . . . said . . . it would now be a "pretty tough climb" to confirm Mr. Bolton."

Also, Senator Voinovich has new information. Senator Lugar was, as usual, less than enthusiastic about Mr. Bolton.

Great quote from Lincoln Chaffee:

"The other way [to resolve the dispute] would be to release the papers."

I did have a few problems with the article, especially at the end where Democrats were not given a chance to respond to Republican lies, and I wrote The Times about it.

Democrats get to paint Bush as obstructionist and imperialistic. This is a win for moderates and liberals, politically and other ways. It is not certain there will be a recess appointment, but the points have already been made: Bush is damaged, and Democrats have found some strength (with help from Steve and others).

Here is the quote from Reuters:

White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card talked on Monday to Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about providing additional information on Bolton, but they came to no agreement.

"We've continued to make a good-faith effort. The Democrats clearly aren't interested in more information," McClellan said.

Bush is going to use the bully pulpit to beat up the Democrats as obstructionists. Dems had better fight back fast and furious about getting stiffed.

I do think that day-to-day MSM reporting on the nomination is nothing but shameful as it fails miserably at providing even the basic facts.

But Peter Baker and Dafna Linzer's article in the Washington Post really provides something different:

It lays out the immediate successes -- on issues ranging from weapons proliferation to North Korea and Iran -- in the few days and weeks since Bolton left the State Dept.

This is, in essence, the most powerful, unequivocal indictment in the MSM to date of John Bolton and the policies he stands for: the ultra-right-wing policies of neo-conservatism.

But the article goes much further:

It asserts that the policies Bolton and the Cheney-wingers stand for have effectively perverted the administration's own foreign policy goals. I think this is momentous - because it has not been stated this clearly before.

The article lays out the concrete facts of the matter: the ideology of the lunatic fringe Bolton represents has not only destroyed, in record time, America's standing, and authority, on the international stage -- it has rendered America unable to see its interests -- legitimate or not -- represented.

Any discussion of the legitimacy of pre-emptive war doctrines and so-called pushes for democracy in countries labeled as tyrannies or just proclaimed 'evil' is completely moot -- because John Bolton, above everthing else, has taken America off the list of countries that do diplomacy. The groupthink hatched by the organizations that spawned this regime is destroying itself as it goes along. The extreme ideologies of American supremacy, literally embodied by John Bolton, are suffocating and crumbling under their own contradictions.

Ideology crushed by its own weight.

I'm beginning to get an Idea of How this Works.

I realize that which ever group is doing this "Filibuster" thing can't nominate there own candidate, but if they are Only trying to let time Pass, maybe they could use that Same time to come up with a Better Nominee, and just voice their Thoughts?

Both sides seem to be surrounded by the Press.

If they had a good idea, even though they cannot formaly present it, maybe they could present it to the People through the Media.

If they managed to come up with a Name that Suited Both Parties, wouldn't it Just make Sense for Everyone to jump on that Wagon, and wouldn't OUR Leaders almost be forced to consider an alternative?

We need to be emphasizing Republican senators' discomfort with the recess appointment. The more quotes from guys like Allen and Roberts criticizing a recess appointment are floating around, the harder it will be for the White House to claim they were forced to do it by the Democrats.

I'm sorry, but I don't see how this is anything but a win for Bush. Do you think he actually cares if Bolton goes to the UN with the approval of the Senate? No, his objective is to get Bolton into the UN. Period.

All this accomplished was to enable Bush to go forward with Bolton's recess appointment without releasing the documents in question. Plus it has the added benefit that republicans don't have to actually sign their names onto this appointment by voting for him.

Explain to me where the "victory" is for the democrats. Except that for once, at least they didn't fold. But that's about it.

I would like to hear Steve's response to semper fubar's point.

Bolton's gonna go to the UN. The Dems aren't gonna get the documents. And the media is telling Bush's side of the story.

I read the Reuters article and it stinks.

Not a victory? Did you see how many times Bush has been referred to as a lame duck in the press in the last week?
You can give Steve a good deal of credit for creating that impression.

If this is a victory it is small compared to the fact that the War Criminal party is still in power. Nothing less than completely and utterly destroying the War Criminals can be considered victory. The War Criminal Party must be totally revealed to the American People so that the thought of them will bring disgust for many generations into the future. The truth must be continually pounded forth since we must be relentless as we are fighting Evildoers, our War Criminals, and their incessant Lies.

If there was an opposition party in Nazi Germany and they succeeded, in 1940, in stymying Rudolf Hess' further ascendancy in government, would you think that was a major victory in light of what was happening and what was to come?

Carl and semper fubar,

I think that you aren't acknowledging the larger picture. If you step back from the technical aspects of how they can squeeze Bolton through the door, you would see that the landscape is changing all around us. Rapidly.

There's been a lot of talk about a 'sea change' in public opinion regarding every aspect of the administration's policies -- domestically as well as internationally. And I for one think that it's becoming next to impossible to deny that.

The public pressure against virtually all aspects of the Bush administration -- not just single issues -- is raising VERY fast.

To use an admittedly strained analogy - they are not riding the express elevator downwards at ear-popping speed -- the cable has been cut and they are beginning a free-fall.

Just remind yourself of Sensenbrenner's efforts to censure recent Capitol hearings and you get a sense of how well they know what's going on.

There's much talk about 'this nomintation not being about Bolton any more'. Don't forget that it also has another, traduced meaning: A lame-duck Bolton at the UN and a lame-duck president in the WH are going to have to maneuver in a totally changed political environment. This is why this fight has ceased to be about Bolton, and why a recess appointment is only going to backfire even more badly.

There's a steam train coming at them. At full speed. And its not going to look nice when the s*&t finally hits the fan.

Help me... Democrats are bad because they "play" politics with Bolton.

First - what does it say about Bush/White House's political skills/power that they cannot win a public political battle?? Where is all the political capital??

Second - Democrats are engaging in politics because it is the only way to exert power. They can't govern without control of White House or Congress. Lacking a vehicle to govern, oppostion politics is the primary game.

Third - If White House wanted to collaborate with Democrats then Democrats could contribute to governing. This is within White House power to change the dynamics.

I hate whinning by those in charge...

I shall not open my bottle of wine until they are mounting the scaffold.

Once the Republicans realize that all is lost, then Katy Bar the Door - "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose."

well said btree.

UN and legality of US being in Iraq - can someone help?

I remember reading somewhere that some UN resolution was going to expire ?end of this year. Without it, the US would have to negotiate something else with ?whom to operate legally?

How's my memory, can someone explain?

If this is correct will this be a job for the UN ambassador or can it be done by Rice's UN point person?

btree -- Yes, that's the way I see it, too. I've felt for some time now that Dems and other Bush opponents have re-sculpting the political terrain, and doing a magnificent job. I think Bush & Co are gamers, but we've got real warriors on our side.

And something else -

the 'single issue' under permanent review on this blog has served its purpose: to act like a prism focusing on a specific and well-defined aspect of the entire pile of s*&t, excuse me, the entire, massive train wreck that this administration works so hard at producing every day.

The problem with mountains of goo is that they are difficult to get your hands around. They are slithery, and they stink. ;-)

Focusing on a single issue like this one has made it possible for people to get a grasp of the entire heap. It acts as a stand-in for all the other crap. As such, it has already been a huge success.

Just think of how easy Wolfwitz, a key architect of the most outrageous criminal act and foreign policy disaster of this adminstration got into the World Bank earlier this year. I think one can argue that the basically corrupt nature of the nomination process there prevented any semblance of accountability. Yet another reason to work hard on improving, not corrupting further and destroying, international bodies.

The FT recently argued, as Steve noted, that the UN has been doing rather well without any ambassador at all chosen by Bush. The problem with that is precisely what I've argued above -- America will lose out.

What's fascinating is that you never know just when the bubble will burst. Just what did it? Why are so many people realizing right now that they have been had?

I see at Charging Rhino that Luger is acting as a pressure release valve for the GOP by asserting that the refusal of the executive branch to provide info documents is not a conflict relating to "checks and balance". Luger apparently reasons so because the request for info docs is not the will of the majority. WHAAA? Didn't he himself ask that the documents be provided while acting as chairman of the committee charged with investigating Bolton? Let's find out what those Bolton NSA memos contain.

thanks for your response, btree. I do very much hope that you are right, but it's hard not to be pessimistic after all that's happened (and all that HASN'T happened in the press.)

I want them all to swing......

It does piss me off that the so-called moderate republicans (SCMR) get to hide behind a recess apppointment, and then, I predict, whine about how they wish Bush had picked someone more appropriate for the job. Like they'd have voted against him if it came to a vote. AS IF!

Can the next President remove Bolton from that position?

I'm just wondering. Can't wait to see the partisan hackery increase ten-fold after Bolton's recess appointment.

Check it out - vote results:

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=1&vote=00142