Ultima Ratio Regum

Bush’s previous recess appointments have given us such dedicated public servants as Eric Edelman, former Grand Imperial Vizier of Turkey; and the intrepid John Bolton, who bravely revealed Cuba’s diabolical plot to pursue a policy of considering the feasibility of launching an effort to research the possibility of developing a bioweapons program.

The current crop of appointees is even more impressive. There’s Susan E. Dudley, new head of the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, whose considered position on climate change is that “it is likely to be beneficial, occurring at night, in the winter, and at the poles.”

She’s less sanguine about arsenic in drinking water, noting merely that there “is a wide range of uncertainty in the science surrounding the health effects of arsenic in U.S. drinking water supplies.”

Andrew G. Biggs is the new deputy director of the Social Security Administration, which is a step down in prestige from his previous position as assistant director of the Cato Institute's Project on Social Security Privatization. He’s well qualified for the job, though, given his white-hot hatred for SS, and his moderate talent as an editor.

Bush’s decision to appoint Sam Fox as ambassador to Belgium seems like a mere thank-you to a prominent GOP fundraiser...a kindler, gentler form of corruption. There’s probably a limit to the amount of damage Fox can do, even if Joe Lieberman thinks he “represents what America is all about.”

Lieberman’s love for Fox is interesting, by the way, given that the Republican Jewish Coalition, which Fox chaired until recently, targeted him for years with attacks almost as scurrilous as those Fox funded in order to check the rampages of the archfiend John Kerry. Now, for some reason, their opinion of him has softened considerably.

In more positive news, there's considerable trouble brewing for National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences director David A. Schwartz and Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy founder Italia Federici.

Those Bush cultists who are exulting over his newly regained "decisiveness" should note that his cronyism seems to cause more problems for the GOP than it solves.

(Photo by Watertiger.)