Well I know there aren't that many of you who are C-Span devotees . . . but if you happened to catch the senate committee meeting today that was considering the nomination of Mr. Bolton to be Ambassador to the U.N., it certainly was interesting. Senator Luger was determined to report the nomination to the Senate floor with a positive recommendation and he appeared to have the votes since there were 10 Republicans and only 8 Democrats on the committee. The Democrats were flummoxed. They were not expecting the move at this time because serious allegations had arisen against him and not a tremendous amount of consideration had taken place. The meeting was supposed to go until 5 o'clock, but by 3:50 Senator Luger was trying to bulldoze the meeting and bring it to an unexpected vote. Senator Biden, the ranking member of the minority made an impassioned case to vote against Mr. Bolton. He and others had many questions that seemed to need answers. It was clear that several of the Republicans were smugly giving only the slightest ear to the debate. And then things suddenly changed. Senator Voinovich took the floor briefly to say that because of the allegations raised in this meeting, he did not favor the nominee. Now Senator Voinovich is a Republican. It took awhile for the import of the statements he made to sink in to the whole committee. It was suddenly clear that to the Republicans that the motion to report favorably to the Senate the nomination of Mr. Bolton, if that motion were made, and it actually had been made but not acted on, was going to fail in a tie vote, 9 to 9. The Democrats were very gracious from that point, only asking for adequate time to consider the nomination, perhaps as much as a month more. They could have just said, "Hmpph. We don't care what you do, you don't have the votes, this nomination is dead. But they did not gloat, they were very gracious.

So one Republican had a concience. It was obvious that Bolton had no business being nominated to this position, that he is a loose cannon on the ship of state, another wild nomination by the thoughtless chief executive of this country. I'm certain the price he will pay for his bout of conscience will be large. But you have to salute Voinovich for that courage don't you? Perhaps some manner of bi-partisanship may return to government. There is hope as long as one Republican can be swayed by logical argument.