Welcome! The Senate Foreign Relations Committee reconvenes today at 10am ET to consider the nomination of the now infamous John Bolton to the position of US Ambassador to the United Nations.
Unless you've been living under a rock the past month, you'll know that this nomination is highly controversial - with accusations and testimony against Bolton who bullied intelligence analysts and tried to get them fired for not providing him with the correct (cough, cough) intelligence about Cuba.
Update [2005-5-12 12:35:34 by FleetAdmiralJ]: MSNBC has a
nice, if not a little misleading headline picture.
more...
This thing has been going on for about two hours now and should end at around 3pm with a vote or votes on whether to send the nomination to the whole Senate.
First to go was Lugar. He essentially spent his time either bashing the Democrats for questioning Bolton and making excuses for Bolton.
Voinovich went second. He ripped Bolton pretty good, but he ultimate said that he would vote to send Bolton to the senate, as long as the committee did so without recommendation.
Biden went third and has said some things such as the Senate does not work for the President, that the Senate, and the Senate alone and not the executive can decide what is relevant, and that no president is entitled to have his nominees confirmed.
First Bolton Thread
Second Bolton Thread
Please unrecommend those two and recommend this thread.
You can unrecommend this one as a New thread is up.
This is on CSPAN 3 and at least occastionally on the major news networks.
Update [2005-5-12 12:24:54 by FleetAdmiralJ]: Sarbanes, in his calm and grandfatherly way, explained why he thinks Bolton is not good for the UN, including the fact that it is not just a representative but also a managerial position, and Bolton, frankly, sucks at being a manager.
Update [2005-5-12 12:29:8 by FleetAdmiralJ]: Senator Allen was fifth. Not that I need to say anymore, but, well...he's George Allen. He called the UN "anti-american", a waste of the American's people's money, and is "protecting tyrants"
Update [2005-5-12 12:39:42 by FleetAdmiralJ]: Christopher Dodd went sixth. One of his highlights of his talk was that if the committee doesn't like the nominee, why doesn't it end in comittee instead of dragging the deal out in the whole Senate.
Update [2005-5-12 12:50:38 by FleetAdmiralJ]: Chafee was quick, essentially saying he didn't like Bolton. I didn't hear him say how he would vote.
Update [2005-5-12 12:54:27 by FleetAdmiralJ]: Senator Kerry is up now