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Powell Playing Quiet Role in Bolton Battle

Bolton's Biggest Problem
David Ignatius

Bush Backs His U.N. Nominee, but Powell Warns of Volatility
Douglas Jehl

2 Evangelicals Want to Strip Courts' Funds
"Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court," Dobson said. "They don't have to fire anybody or impeach them or go through that battle. All they have to do is say the 9th Circuit doesn't exist anymore, and it's gone."

GOP Sets Up Filibuster Showdown
"Republicans carefully chose their nominees for a Senate confrontation that could occur sometime in the next month, assuming that they can put Democrats, who pride themselves on appealing to female and black voters, on the defensive if they attempt again to deny two women, one of them an African American, an up-or-down vote.
But Democrats long have argued that race and sex aside, Owen and Brown are conservative ideologues whose views and writings make them unfit to serve in such sensitive, lifetime positions. Brown has said active governments lead to "a debased, debauched culture." Owen signed an opinion on abortion that drew a sharp rebuke from the man who now is Bush's attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales."

Judicial Insanity
Charles Krauthammer
"Let us have a bit of sanity here. One of the glories of American democracy is the independence of the judiciary. The deference and reverence it enjoys are priceless assets. The Supreme Court is the only institution that could have ended the Bush-Gore fiasco of 2000 with the immediacy, finality and, yes, legitimacy that it did. (True, liberals, who for half a century employed judicial fiat to enact their political agenda, have been whining for five years about this particular judicial exercise. But the critical point is that, whine or not, the ruling was accepted as law.) Moreover, and more generally, judicial independence and supremacy are necessary checks on the tyranny of popular majorities."

Private Accounts, Public Accountability
Martin Mayer
"Most people concerned about the security of their pensions in a world of personal accounts worry that the money would be invested in an Enron. As advertised, diversification would take care of most of that problem. But you can't diversify time. If President Bush's proposal had been in effect for the last 30 years, an American retiring in the spring of 2000 - having earned an average income and built an average personal account in index funds - would retain a personal account at least a third larger than the personal account of his younger brother, who had the same income and the same investments but retired in the spring of 2003."

Passing the Buck
Paul Krugman