I don't see any mention of this on the front page, or any of the diaries on the front page, so in case people aren't aware:
Barbara Boxer is petitioning Rhode Island senator Lincoln Chafee, who seems to be the most swayable on the Bolton nomination, to oppose it. Signatures and phone calls are needed by Thursday morning. Sign here.
We've all seen the many arguments against the Bolton nomination, but I find this quote from Senator Robert Byrd's book "Losing America", written last year well before the nomination, to be very prescient.
All in all, the White House displayed, across the board, a complete lack of interest in pursuing opportunities for international efforts. It followed that a 'go it alone' Bush team preferred to fly solo in a global war on terror. They demostrated little use for the United Nations. Since the founding of the UN in 1945, each new president had promptly nomiated an ambassador to represent nominees for secretary of state and UN ambassador in tandem. Bush broke this tradition by holding his choice of John Negroponte until March 6, 2001, some six weeks after making Colin Powell secretary of state. More insulting to the UN, Bush let six months pass between mentioning Negroponte and actually nominating him to the Senate. The Senate rapidly confirmed Negroponte just ten days later, but more than half a year of UN time had been lost. Due to this delay, the United States failed, for the first time, to retain its seat at the UN human rights commission in Geneva. Some say that the administration's hostility to the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty to ban land mines, and the International Criminal Court also led to loss of the U.S. seat. Although the United States regained its seat in 2002, this diplomatic embarrassment could have been avoided.
In sum, the Bush administration treats the UN as if it were an unnecessary encumbrance. Outright hostility to the organization runs right through many highly placed Bush officials, most notoriously John Bolton, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs. Bolton has been widely quoted as saying, 'If the UN secretariat in New York lost ten stories it wouldn't make a bit of difference.' Given this mind-set, Bush's State of the Union pronouncements signaled a dangerous radicalism.
(emphasis mine)
Of all of Bush's nominations, this has got to be one of the worst. Even no ambassador would be better than Bolton (and apparently could be another Bush alternative). Please sign the petition now.