Pirate's Cove

The poor New York Times. Once again, their liberal and apologist agenda has been trumped. Today’s editorial by, well, no one, sounds like a whiny recalcitration of the Leftist doctrine of smear people, stand up for the enemy and other bad people, and, for good measure, forget to do research.

If there’s a positive side to President Bush’s appointment of John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations yesterday, it’s that as long as Mr. Bolton is in New York, he will not be wreaking diplomatic havoc anywhere else. Talks with North Korea, for instance, have been looking more productive since Mr. Bolton left the State Department, and it’s hard not to think that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s generally positive performance in office is due, in part, to her canniness in dispatching Mr. Bolton out of Washington.

There’s the start of the smear, with a shot at SoS Rice, for good measure. Funny how they work in North Korea as going well. Today’s story on North Korea shows that no progress is being made at the table. Oops. And, BTW, well, let me just call the unkown writer, say, Brave Sir Robin, President Bush stated that Bolton is an "important part of (his) State Department team" yesterday.

But the appointment is, of course, terrible news for the United Nations, whose diplomats have heard weeks of Senate testimony about Mr. Bolton’s lack of respect for their institution and his deeply undiplomatic, bullying style of doing business. Senator George Voinovich, the Ohio Republican who became one of Mr. Bolton’s strongest critics, said yesterday that he planned to send the new ambassador a book on how to be an effective manager. It couldn’t hurt, but this may be the first time a world superpower has used its top United Nations post as a spot for the remedial training of a troublesome government employee.

The first part is correct, they should be worried. Cox and Forkum did it best (click photo for full size):

The second part is pure crying, something Voinovich is used to.

Mr. Bush had been unable to get Mr. Bolton’s nomination confirmed by the Senate, so he waited until Congress left town and used his constitutional power to make recess appointments. This is a perfectly legal tactic, though one that has seldom been used to fill this kind of position. A recess appointment is particularly dicey for a major diplomatic post, where a good nominee should carry an aura of personal gravitas and legitimacy.

Is the appointment of a Supreme Court Justice ok? I would guess so, since George Washington did that. So did Ike. Perhaps Brave SIr Robin should Google "recess appointment." He might learn something. The Senate treason lobby wouldn’t allow an up or down vote.

The United Nations could certainly be improved, but Mr. Bolton is a poor candidate for a reformer. To make the institution better, the Bush administration would first have to show that it has a vision of what the U.N. could be. That vision has to begin by accepting the fact that nations other than the United States have a right to have a say, and sometimes take the lead.

You mean that August body that has those champions of human rights, China, Cuba, and Sudan on their Human Rights Commission? Brave Sir Robin and the rest of the Treason Lobby would prefer that we run away without even employing the Holy Hand Grenade.

Read: Sore Losers, part 8 Gajillion »