Rice's committee vote

Only two "no" votes: Barbara Boxer and John Kerry. (So, give him one point for that.)

“I'm going to vote for you, but I must tell you it's with a little bit of frustration and some reservation,” Sen. Joseph R. Biden of Delaware, the committee's ranking Democrat, said Wednesday.
  The Day article

Oooooh. Tough guy.

What does she care? It's still a vote.

Biden said the administration had been less than candid about the problems in Iraq. “Time and again, this administration has tried to leave the American people with the impression that Iraq has well over 100,000 fully trained, fully competent military police and personnel,” the senator said. “And that is simply not true. You and I know that. We're months, probably years away from reaching our target goal.”

Rice was conciliatory in her reply. “Senator, we've made a lot of decisions in this period of time,” she said. “Some of them have been good. Some of them have not been good. Some of them have been bad decisions, I'm sure. I know enough about history to stand back and to recognize that you judge decisions not at the moment, but in how it all adds up.”

First of all, I wouldn't characterize that as conciliatory if this weren't a bunch of Demwit Congressmice we're talking about. It starts with another one of those Rumsfiend dismissals: Hey, bad stuff happens. And it ends with, in the end we'll be vindicated, buster. Unfortunately, it's all adding up in the minus column, so I think she's being unjustifiably optimistic.

Just for the record...

Democrats voting in favor were Biden and Sens. Paul S. Sarbanes of Maryland; Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut; Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin; Bill Nelson of Florida; and Barack Obama of Illinois.

So much for the Great Black Hope Obama. Condolences, Illinois.

On another closely watched nomination, the Senate Judiciary Committee delayed until next week a vote on Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel, to be attorney general after Democrats on the committee insisted they did not have all the information and documents they need.

From what I've been reading, the White House isn't going to cough it up, either. We'll see.