Another Round, Another Win

It's difficult to believe, but once again today we won another round in the fight over John Bolton's nomination to be UN Ambassador. In a 6 p.m. vote Thursday evening, supporters failed to muster the 60 votes necessary to end debate on the nomination, meaning that it will be at least June 7 before another vote is held.

The vote on cloture was 56-42. Three Democrats (Landrieu, Pryor and the Benator) voted to end debate, while Republican Arlen Specter and Democrat Daniel Inouye did not vote. Frist voted no so that he can later make a motion to reconsider the vote in the future.

For more on the vote to delay the nomination further, see this from the New York Times, or this from the Washington Post, which notes that the roll call vote was held open for about fifty minutes while Bolton supporters tried to rustle up enough votes to achieve cloture today.

See Stygius for the live-blog on the Senate debate today (great job!); Steve Clemons and Laura Rosen for analysis and discussion.

Quite a victory for opponents of the Bolton nomination. More to come, clearly! This is a smart move on the Democrats' part: keep demanding this information, and sooner or later the White House will either give in or give up.