1115.org

A trip down the memory hole:

Republicans Vow To Punish Clinton If He Appoints Lee (12-97):

Republican leaders on Capitol Hill say they’ll make President Clinton suffer if he sidesteps the U.S. Senate to make Bill Lann Lee the nation’s top civil rights attorney. But Clinton apparently is determined to do just that.

“If they make a recess appointment, then I have to say, it’s a finger in the eye of the Senate,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told FOX on Sunday. “I think you’d find there would be an awful lot of repercussions from that.”
[…]
“I think there’ll be a slowdown on a lot of things from the president,” Hatch said Sunday. “I think you’re going to have difficulty getting judges through. They’re going to have difficulty on the appropriations process. I think there’ll be attempts by some to … really let the president know you don’t do this.”

Hmmmm…wonder if Hatch, no stranger to rank hypocrisy, has changed his mind.

Bush may bypass Senate and appoint Bolton to UN (Reuters):

The White House signaled on Monday that President Bush may bypass the Senate and appoint John Bolton, his embattled nominee for U.N. ambassador, to the post temporarily as hope faded for a Senate vote on the nomination.

A recess appointment could be announced as early as Friday night, immediately after the Senate is scheduled to adjourn for the monthlong August recess, congressional aides said.

John Bolton doesn’t deserve to be a government employee, much less the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. He’s been described as a “kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy”, is mixed up in the Plame investigation (and possibly lied to Congress about it), ordered intelligence intercepts on colleagues and was abusive to subordinates who didn’t necessarily share his political views.

The Senate knows Bolton is not fit for duty, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee forwarded his nomination to the full Senate without recommendation. Democrats have successfully filibustered the nomination on the Senate floor as the White House has stubbornly refused to release documents concerning Bolton’s questionable use of the intelligence intercepts.

After all of this, the White House is still hinting that Bolton will receive a recess appointment, a travesty considering that they could end the filibuster at any time simply by releasing the documents. The irony is that if Bolton is implicated in the Plame story (and his close ties to jailed reporter Judith Miller are a big red flag), or is proven to have lied to Congress about having testified before the Plame grand jury, the White House is going to wish they never even heard of John Bolton. And only then will they have something in common with sane people, something foreign to Orrin Hatch.