This is worth highlighting from Friday’s Window on The Week:

Does Richard Lugar actually want John Bolton to be America’s ambassador to the U.N.? We assume so — which is why we’re baffled that he’s doing such a bad job of getting Bolton confirmed. As head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he could have held a vote on Bolton’s nomination in August without allowing new hearings (which, in practice, became nothing but a chance for Democrats to trot out their tired complaints about President Bush’s foreign policy). Among other things, this would have forced Lincoln Chafee to put himself on the record before Tuesday’s Rhode Island Senate primary, in which he faces a tough challenge. Instead the committee dallied. A vote on Bolton was to have happened Thursday, but at the last minute Chafee refused to confirm that he would support the nomination, and it’s now unclear when the vote will come. Chafee backed Bolton last year, and his obstinacy now — after Bolton has spent a remarkably successful year at the U.N., and at a time when the chaos of the Middle East makes diplomatic continuity vital — is especially shameful. But Lugar didn’t need to let things happen this way, and he will deserve his share of blame if Bolton is not confirmed.