- Filibuster; and
- Repeat step 1 as necessary.
Moreover, few in the MSN explain or examine the Dems' outrageous reasoning: leveraging the Administration to release "information related to his access to details from secretly intercepted conversations of foreigners" and drafts of Bolton's 2003 Congressional testimony on Syria. More simply, the disloyal opposition wants classified or underlying details fully protected by executive and deliberate privilege, in violation of separation of powers. And that's still a subterfuge, according to John Podhoretz:
If the opposition to John Bolton's nomination began as a foreign-policy critique, it has now become a simple matter of power politics. The Democrats have decided that blocking Bolton is the test case of their continuing relevance. The president will almost certainly have to make a recess appointment for Bolton, and he might as well declare publicly that the Democrats are acting in bad faith and that he is acting to fill a critical job because the opposition party is playing politics with a critical foreign-policy job. No more negotiating over the Syria documents or the names of the intelligence officers. That's a Democratic dodge and a dangerous one where the separation of powers is concerned.Worse still, the Bolton vote's a dangerous precident permitting Democrats to veto a Republican President's choice of advisors--for spite. Could Republicans have blocked Janet Reno just because she's liberal?
It's a sham and a shame. While Dems strangle someone spot-on to stop U.N. scams and sex-scandals, the wheels are coming off in Turtle Bay and Kofi Annan sinks ever lower. By delaying the Bolton vote, Democrats implicitly condone and extend the multilateral Ancient Regime, comprising corruption and incompetence in equal measure.
Only a month after de-emphasizing Senate Rule XXII, the filibuster's returned like zombies swarming a Pittsburgh shopping mall. A Supreme Court nomination will rouse even more from the dead. So grab your baseball or cricket bats and water pistols: This time, let's kill the filibuster forever.
More:
Joe's Dartblog also noticed the MSM hiding the ball.
4 comments:
Sometimes I think we will never have another UN Ambassador!
Boomr, you couldn't be more wrong. The only useful UN reforms came under pressure from Senator Helms in the 80s and 90s (withholding dues) and when Reagan pulled out of UNESCO in the early 1980s. You somehow think world diplomats operate as idealized rational men. That's a fantasy; they ain't. The only thing capable of overcoming inerta is pressure. Force at the table is the only thing that moves the table at all.
Please give me a break. The UN position has nothing to do with Bolton's credentials--it has to do with power politics. The Dems, if anything, are attempting to make Frist squirm and frustrate an Administration that will not put up with the nonsense of the likes of Durbin, Biden, Dodd, Pelosi, and the rest of the obstructionists, including Mr. Levin.
The UN has become a worthless institution : it is corrupt to the core; it has a dismal human rights record; it was powerless to stop Saddam, the sadist; and its leadership is useless.
Yet, we continue to jabber about how the UN needs reform. Reform is not the word; the word is "change", change from top to bottom. For that one does need an attack dog, that is, someone who can effectively chase the raskals out.
The Dems know this, and they are quite simply afraid that Bolton will be successful, thus causing them more problems in the coming elections.
But this is more than politics as usual; this is a bunch of spiteful children , standing on the outside looking, trying desperately to break through the conservative political barricades.
boomr:
Actually, it's both: an institution riddled with idiocy, incompetence and pilfering. It couldn't begin to help tsunami victims (aside from distributing condoms), but swiftly claimed credit for relief provided by the U.S. and Australia. Ulysses is right, as was Diplomadic, "the UN is a sham."
As for UN reform, I've been there, done that, and force, threats and pressure are the only tools that work, though not nearly enough. Helms' withholding spurred some reform, but eventually Congress restored the funding; change stopped dead.
Our UNESCO 1/1/84 withdrawal was a success. (A decade before, we threatened to leave after UNESCO barred the Israeli delegation from a working group meeting; UNESCO reversed itself quickly.) We did force out the chief anti-Western loony (UNESCO's Director-General Amadou Mahtar M'Bow, from Senegal) who was aiming to prohibit cross border telecom and Western media entering LDC nations without a cut of the revenues. (Mind you, the Western press goes to Senegal only for soundbites of natural disasters and sham elections--not a very potent threat.) The U.K. and Singapore also quit. And the situation began to improve slowly. The problems were immense, including widespread nepotism and embezzlement (M'Bow was a crook: he spent 70 percent of the budget on staff, named his wife's cousin UNESCO personnel director; UNESCO's in Paris; the D-G and senior staff collected million dollar housing allowances and lived in virtual palaces in the 15th and 16th) and espionage (UNESCO repeatedly hired staff who were Soviets spies; at one point, France PNG'd a dozen staff spies out of the country). U.S. withdrawal was most immediately successful in forcing budget discipline: rising at 8 percent/year in '83, the increases dropped to around 2 percent/year five years later. M'Bow was replaced, but by another crook. Eventually, UNESCO reversed itself on free speech issues.
I had a small role in an incident that was Reagan's second finest hour (topped by firing the striking air traffic controllers), and very relevant here. At the International Telecommunication Union's 1982 conference in Nairobi was delayed and nearly derailed when several Arab nations introduced a resolution to strip Israel of its ITU membership in response to Israel's invasion of Lebanon. I emphasize that the ITU is a technical body, having nothing to do with politics. Nonetheless, the Arab world refused to begin the conference until the countries voted on its proposal. The U.S. ambassador to the conference, Mickey Gardner, called Washington for instructions. And President Reagan didn't hesitate: "Tell 'um if they pass that thing, we're going to withdraw from the UN." Gardner did, and once the member states realized Reagan was serious, the resolution was watered down to censure Israel for destroying some telecommunications infrastructure while invading Lebanon.
In international diplomacy, if you don't object, everyone else will run you over. Moynihan was assertive and successful. Bolton will be as well.
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