Democratic Logic at its Finest

President Bush today installed John Bolton as the US ambassador to the UN. The President has the power to make such appointments without the consent of the Senate, if Congress is on recess. Bolton's nomination had been blocked by Senate Democrats on the grounds that he is a big meanie head who can't be trusted to play nicely with all the third-world despots in the General Assembly.

Not surprisingly, vacationing Democratic senators reacted with outrage. "The abuse of power and the cloak of secrecy from the White House continues," Ted Kennedy thundered. "It's a devious maneuver that evades the constitutional requirement of Senate consent and only further darkens the cloud over Mr. Bolton's credibility at the U.N."

An abuse of power? A devious maneuver that evades the constitutional requirement of Senate consent? Hmm...sounds like Senator Kennedy is perfectly describing the Democratic strategy of filibustering and obstruction that led to Bolton's recess appointment in the first place. The Democrats would not allow the full Senate to vote on Bolton's nomination, because they know they would have lost it.

Some say Bolton's historic distaste for the UN make him unfit to represent the US there. In an editorial just after Bolton's original nomination, the New York Times asked plaintively, "What's next? Donald Rumsfeld to negotiate a new set of Geneva conventions? Martha Stewart to run the Securities and Exchange Commission?" As always, Mark Steyn provides some much-needed perspective:

Okay, I get the hang of this game. Sending John Bolton to be UN ambassador is like ...putting Sudan and Zimbabwe on the Human Rights Commission. Or letting Saddam’s Iraq chair the UN conference on disarmament. Or sending a bunch of child-sex fiends to man UN operations in the Congo. And the Central African Republic. And Sierra Leone, and Burundi, Liberia, Haiti, Kosovo, and pretty much everywhere else. All of which happened without the UN fetishists running around shrieking hysterically. Why should America be the only country not to enjoy an uproarious joke at the UN’s expense?

Elsewhere in the wacky world of Democratic soundbites, DNC Chairman Howard Dean recently weighed in on the outrageous Supreme Court emiment domain decision thusly: "The president and his right-wing Supreme Court think it is okay to have the government take your house if they feel like putting a hotel where your house is."

There is a good example of the incisive, hard-hitting analysis we've come to expect from the failed presidential candidate of 2004. First, Dean called the court "Bush's right-wing court," even though none of the justices who handed down the Kelo decision were appointed by Bush. Second, Dean seems to be a bit confused as to who concurred with the ruling; the court's "right-wingers" (Scalia, Thomas, and Rehnquist) were joined by O'Connor in dissenting from the ruling. It was the court's liberal wing that abused the emiment domain clause--judges who Dean holds up as model justices for future appointments.

But other than those small little details, Dean made a great point.