Bolton update: More good news

It looks more and more like Bolton's going down:

The Washington Post (click here): "The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has set a vote on John R. Bolton's nomination as ambassador to the United Nations for May 12 -- a delay that Bush administration officials acknowledged yesterday is increasing their anxieties about Bolton's prospects." Good stuff. The more anxious, the better. Signs of desperation: Cheney has come out of his underground bunker to counter Powell's now-public reservations about Bolton's nomination, and various right-wing groups are poised to attack Senator Voinovich and other Republicans who side with the Democrats. Yes, friends, they're turning on their own in order to purify themselves, their party, and their movement. The end is near.

More from the Post: "Republican sources on the Foreign Relations panel said that one of the committee's GOP senators, Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), told colleagues she is particularly troubled by the allegation that Bolton, as a private lawyer in 1994, became so angry at a government contractor that he chased her through a Moscow hotel, hurling objects and verbal threats, and later spread rumors about her." Nice guy, eh?

The New York Times (click here): "Recently declassified e-mail messages provide new details of the bruising battle that John R. Bolton, then an under secretary of state, waged with analysts at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency in 2002 as he sought to deliver a speech reflecting a hard-line view of Cuba and its possible efforts to acquire biological weapons." Yet more evidence of Bush Administration evidence-manipulation leading up to the Iraq invasion. It's one thing to get it wrong, as many governments and intelligence services did, quite another to manipulate the evidence and thereby mislead the American people (and the rest of us). Where's the outrage?

There will be more reprehensible nominations to come, not least for the Supreme Court. Let's hope the Democrats are able to maintain this momentum. And let's hope that at least some good and decent Republicans have the courage to do the right thing.