Bolton-Too Effective for the Democrats

Once again, John Bolton has been denied the opportunity to go to the United Nations and lobby, through thought and deed, for reform to the crippled organization. Mark Noonan thinks he knows why.

Bolton's gravest sins seem to be that (a) he denigrates treaties like the defunct Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and (b) he takes a hostile view of Castro's anti-human tyranny in Cuba. For our leftwingers, treaties like the ABM are holy writ - anything which tends to hobble American power is a vital necessity. Additionally, after five decades on their knees to Fidel, the left isn't about to suddenly stand up, wipe off their collective chin and realise they've been worshipping a pig. Stopping John Bolton has become an exercise in re-affirmation on the left: a means of stating that international law (as expressed by treaty) is paramount in the United States and that Castro's Cuba is the shining light of the world.

I just knew there was a really good reason. It's just that no one on the left seems able to articulate it. Thanks Mark.

Atlas Shrugs has a piece from the New York Sun today that sheds some light on whose greasy fingers might be behind the anti-Bolton nonsense. Any guesses?

...the no. 2 officer at the United Nations, Mark Malloch Brown, whose current annual net salary as an undersecretary general is $125,000 a year, has emerged as the tenant in a house that Mr. Soros owns and that rents for $120,000 a year...

Talk about a conflict of interest. If one is inclined to do the math, Malloch Brown's salary pays for Soros' apartment, and roughly a year's cab fare...if that. I wonder how his family survives. It's funny, everybody is screaming about Bush's "world domination" plot, but everywhere we turn, there's Soros with his greedy little hands behind the power. Apparantly world domination is cool, as long as you spread the love around to the Democratic Party.

In the meantime, Claudia Rosset and George Russell have more on the OFF scandal, which is ever-increasing in scope.

Two possibilities have been brought up for the future of this position. Either it's time for Bush to nominate an acceptable (lap-dog) candidate, or he should go for a Bolton recess appointment, which will no doubt begin to be referred to as the "nuclear option" any day now. A recess appointment would give Bolton 18 months to serve before he must be confirmed.

That is the route that I would take. Let Bolton get in there and do the work. Like everything else with the left, it's all about the up-front rhetoric. Once Bolton proves to be qualified and effective, they will have little choice but to knock it off and give him a vote.