I just checked the
Senate web site and verified that Frisk did not change his vote to nay at the last minute on the Bolton cloture motion.
See why this is signifigant and what may happen below the fold.
The significance of this has not been presented but it is simple. For the nomination to be reconsidered in the Senate one member who voted "nay" on the previous cloture must present a motion to reconsider cloture. That is why Frisk changed his vote to nay the last time they had a
cloture vote. The fact he voted nay was the only reason he could have a second vote.
Yesterday the only Republican on record with a nay vote is George Voinovich. Voinovich had the audacity to prevent Bolton from getting a Foreign Relations Committee recommendation. This forced the republicans to send Bolton's nomination to the Senate floor without a Committee recommendation. That was only the second time in ten years that a Senate Committee has taken that unusual step.
This simply means that Frisk has given up on getting Bolton through the current Senate.
This means only four possibilities exist. The most likely possibility in my opinion is that the President will give a big F.U. to the Senate and the Constitution by making a recess appointment of Bolton.
The second possibility is that the White House will give the Democrats what they have asked for and a Democratic Senator will make a motion to reconsider the Cloture motion.
The third possibility is the President realizes that a recess apointment would be seen as a willful violation of the spirit of the constututional process and withdraw Bolton's nomination instead of releasing the documents which prove the arrogance of the Bolton. (The documents in question could prove that Bolton pressured intelligence analysts to push the WMD/OBL/Saddam Hussein connection instead of the reality based intelligence that said Saddam was a blowhard who was faking out the world with his WMD bluff).
The last Possibility is that the Democrats will see the light and realize that the documents they are asking for would further prove that the DSM documents actually meant the President was Going to take down Saddam come hell or high water and drop the demands for them and allow the cloture motion to pass and therefore let the Republicans in the Senate place Bolton in the U.N.
I actually believe that everyone involved is too arrogant to cave in the least and therefore Bush will symbolically cave by allowing some minor scandal to sink Bolton or most likely give the Democrats and the constitution the symbolic finger of a recess appointment.
That's what it looks like to me. What does it look like to you?