Hats off to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, John Nichols of The Nation Magazine, and Steven Clemons of The Washington Note, for jumping further into the abyss that is UN ambassador nominee John Bolton. They’ve fished up for us, and displayed in remarkably concise form, a whole bunch of new reasons not to trust Bolton – with much of anything, much less the crucial position of UN ambassador.

Based on some of these new revelations, Republican Senator George Voinovich pushed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday to delay their vote for Bolton’s nomination, a bold move and an extremely strong truth-to-power statement to Bush&Co. about the extent of verifiable concern over Bolton. And Good God Almighty, Voinovich succeeded. Apparently, it is adequately concerning that Bolton has spent time on the clock threatening analysts, exagerrating WMD intelligence, and trashing our diplomatic efforts with North Korea and Iran.

But there’s even more. John Nichols tells us that it was also Bolton who headed up the Repug efforts to block the recount in Florida in 2000:

He was put in charge of undermining the recount in Palm Beach County. And you’ll remember Palm Beach County was the place where you had so many of the chad problems, and there are pictures of Bolton, you know, just jumping into situations and forcing people to stop counts, and that stalling of the count in Palm Beach County was a critical part of the screwing up of the whole process. Then when the ballots were taken to Tallahassee, after the Florida State Supreme Court ordered a fuller recount, Bolton went to Tallahassee with them, and it was John Bolton who burst into the room on December 9, 2000, when they were recounting the ballots from Miami-Dade County, one of the most critical of the counties, and announced, “I’m with the Bush-Cheney team, and I’m here to stop the count.” Now, Bolton had no power to do that. I mean, he didn’t have the authority to stop any count. But he did it repeatedly, and he did it with immense force.

And, Steven Clemons says that Bolton yelled at a couple of people at The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in 1993, and also tried to get them fired:

…new allegations…have come up about Mr. Bolton’s abusive behavior and attempts to get people fired…at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which he went onto in 1993…John Bolton served as a commissioner on this. But there are two individuals who apparently were harassed at great lengths by John Bolton, both of whom work at different institutions today.

Not only has this type of antisocial and undemocratic behavior made Bolton increasingly unattractive to our public service circles, he’s apparently no longer a welcome face in the private sector either. Steven Clemons also reports that Bolton’s former employer, the high-powered DC-based law firm Covington and Burling, has refused to hire him back, because he’s so mean to people:

…he was also rejected a return to his law firm, Covington and Burling by senior partners because of their concerns over his abusive behavior. So this question about serial abuse is actually more dramatic than many of us had realized…What’s important about this is there are two angles on Bolton that are very important. One is this surprising abusive behavior question and the lengths to which John Bolton takes his vindictiveness. That’s a workplace ethic issue and something, and it’s really struck a chord in the American public that none of us expected…

As for that North Korea thing, Steven Clemons again explains:

…in July 31, 2003, John Bolton was very frustrated with the direction of the Bush Administration’s North Korea policy. We were on the eve of launching the first round of what are called the six-party talks with North Korea. And John Bolton decided to impose himself on South Korea. South Korea didn’t want to provide him a venue. Gave his speech, which had not gone through the full clearance process and essentially threw a grenade into the middle of this delicate process of negotiation with the North Koreans at that time, which was among our highest national security objectives, trying to tie down North Korea’s nuclear pretensions and ambitions. And Bolton gave this incredible speech, after which North Korean leadership called him human scum, earning Bolton’s, you know, obvious fury for obvious reasons. North Korea is not an easy country to deal with. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that Bolton himself went to extraordinary lengths to sabotage Secretary Powell, Richard Armitage and our ambassador, our envoy dealing with this North Korean nuclear issue, Charles Pritchard, and was at odds frequently. This is just one case of many other cases, where Bolton’s loose cannon style was amazing.

A funny note: Freepers are, freakishly though predictably, taking the dangerous and damaging North Korea incident as a sign that Bolton is actually more recommendable for the job than previously thought. Not very sensible, given that the UN is all about arms control and disarmament, peace-keeping, humanitarian assistance, and human rights. For more on the UN’s success with their mission, see our latest Debunker on Foreign Policy.

All this clearly amounts to the obvious: John Bolton doesn’t play well with others. Not a good boding for a position which requires more than anything an ability to…play well with others.