Filibuster is in the Air Again

Democrats threaten a filibuster on Bolton

By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
May 26, 2005

Democrats said they will try to filibuster John R. Bolton, the president's nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations, if the Bush administration does not turn over two final sets of documents.

"If the administration doesn't give us this information, then I want a 60-vote requirement here so that senators can express their views on this issue of the documentation that we need," said Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, Connecticut Democrat and a member of the Foreign Relations Committee who has been among Mr. Bolton's strongest critics.

Republicans say there are enough votes to confirm Mr. Bolton once those objections are overcome, but they first must win a cloture vote set for this evening to stop the filibuster.

Mr. Dodd said he actually supports an up-or-down vote on Mr. Bolton, but is being forced into a filibuster as a protest against the administration.

It is the latest in a series of stumbling blocks for Mr. Bolton, whose nomination has been held up several times as Democrats and the administration butt heads over releasing records from his time as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.

Mr. Dodd said he knows how a filibuster might look to voters, given how a coalition of senators headed off a showdown earlier this week on filibusters of judicial nominees, but said Democrats must demand the administration's cooperation.

...Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican and chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said the redacted documents show no indication of anything untoward, and that he didn't think the unredacted documents would show anything more.

"I found no evidence that there was anything improper about any aspect of Mr. Bolton's requests for minimized identities of U.S. persons," he wrote in a letter announcing his findings.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, agreed there was nothing improper about Mr. Bolton's request, though he said Mr. Bolton may have violated rules by revealing one of the names he had sought.

Hey! David Broder! Do you think your hero, John McCain, the "real leader in the Senate," can smooth this one over?

Can McCain save the day and garner support from the seven "moderate" Dems, the ones that joined him in the judicial nominee deal, to keep the Senate moving and get a vote on cloture?

Will the all-powerful McCain come to the rescue and save the Senate from extremists like Dodd?