Free Republic

The connection was obvious to senators of both parties, though nobody said so publicly. Four days before Sen. Joseph Biden declared he would seek the Democratic presidential nomination if he could find the financing, he held hostage an important, non-controversial Bush diplomatic appointee. His intent: to force President Bush to reappoint a billionaire backer of Biden to a government oversight board. Nobody expected Biden's move when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee convened last Wednesday to send routine nominations to the floor. Biden, the committee's ranking Democrat, blocked Senate consideration of White House personnel director Dina Habib Powell as the State...

Opening a new battle with the White House, Senate Democrats on Wednesday abruptly blocked the approval of President Bush's nominee for a top public diplomacy job, charging that the administration had injected partisan politics into the drive to improve the United States' image overseas. The nominee, Dina Powell, the White House personnel director, had been expected to win broad approval to become deputy under secretary of state for public diplomacy, to be the second-in-command to Karen P. Hughes in charge of repairing the United States' reputation, especially in the Muslim world. But in what was to have been a routine...