Written by: Beck

Bush's nominee to the United Nations ambassadorship, John Bolton, is going through his confirmation hearings today in the senate. NRO has this story covered back to front. They have an editorial up endorsing Bolton which you can read here, and Eric Pfeiffer is live-blogging the confirmation hearings, going on right now. It sounds like things are going well for Bolton. More surprisingly, it appears that Bolton has received the endorsement of Kofi Annan.

Update: Howard Kaloogian, Co-Chair of Move America Forward, has this to say on the John Bolton hearings:

"What we've seen today by Bolton opponents like Senator Barbara Boxer and Joseph Biden is a clear display of the Blame America First mentality that permeates the United Nations today.

"For some reason, certain Senators on the Foreign Relations Committee seem to take offense with the notion that John Bolton believes that it is more important to advance U.S. interests than the interests of an international organization whose masters are often some of the world’s most notorious dictators, despots and tyrants.

"John Bolton is a man of accomplishment who has never wavered in his commitment to defending America's best interests. As the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. he will speak truth to power.

"So far we’ve seen nothing but inexcusable grandstanding from those still bitter that their party lost in the last presidential election, and they keep clamoring for a different foreign policy than was endorsed by the American people. The Senators who are attacking John Bolton seem to have forgotten that the candidate who advocated for a "global test" before the U.S. made foreign policy decisions was defeated at the polls.

Further Update: Jeff Goldstein has this to say:

Fact: If Bolton is not confirmed, we'll be sending a signal to the rest of the world that we are not, in fact, as serious about UN reform—or American foreign-policy rectitude—as we pretend to be. Bolton has America’s best interests at heart, and he is the perfect man for the position of US Ambassador, particularly in the wake of the oil-for-food scandal and the myriad other UN missteps of the past few years. Anyone who votes against him is, in my opinion, a bonafide moral coward posing as a statesman. Period.

Yet Another Update: TKS has a roundup of quotes and comments about Bolton from around the world. My favorite is the North Koreans, who had this to say:

"The most undesirable person was named U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, thus raising tension in the United Nations and international community," said Choson Sinbo, the newspaper run by a Pyongyang-aligned organization of ethnic Korean residents in Japan.

"Bolton's speaking style is so violent the North has labeled him as human scum," said the paper, considered a mouthpiece of the communist regime in Pyongyang. "He is the worst UN envoy," it declared.

Bolton took a vehement stand against North Korea when he was serving as undersecretary of state for arms control. He once described North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Il as "tyrannical" and called the life in the Stalinist state a "hellish nightmare."

Amusingly, the more and more negative press I read on John Bolton, the more and more I like him.

Son of Update: It looks like John Kerry, in asking a question of Bolton, may have accidentally outed a federal agent.