The Bush team has brought back another Iran-Contra criminal. Elliott Abrams, who lied to Congress in 1987 concerning his involvement with the Reagan-era subversion of the Constitution, has now been named as the Director of Middle Eastern Affairs at the White House.

Not only is he a criminal, he also is a bad choice-- he has criticized Jewish intermarriage and has advocated alliances between Jews and Evangelical Christians. All of this points to a hard-line approach-- precisely the wrong way to go, in my mind.

Let's see-- we've got John Poindexter spying on us, John Negroponte at the UN, and Otto Reich at the State Dept. It certainly pays to run a secret war. What's next, Ollie North as the next VP nominee ?

Reich is out, isn't he? [...Googling....] Yes, various sites say his "recess appointment
as assistant secretary of state for western hemispheric affairs ran out ..." To continue in this post, he will have to be renominated.

With the way Bush is reviving these frozen relics from administrations past, I half expect them to trot out William Seward next to handle relations with the Russians.