“Today, al-Qaida has not only regrouped, but it is on the march,” Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Al-Qaida is now functioning exactly as its founder and leader, Osama bin Laden, envisioned it.”

Sen. John Thune (R-SD) said if he were running for reelection this year, “you obviously don’t embrace the president and his agenda.” “The first thing I’d do is acknowledge that there have been mistakes made,” Thune said.

Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH), who refused to back John Bolton to be U.N. Ambassador when he was first nominated last year, has caved. In an op-ed titled, “Why I’ll Vote for Bolton,” Voinovich said questioning Bolton’s renomination “would jeopardize our influence in the United Nations” and “undermin[e] our policies and agenda.”

Yesterday was the “deadliest day yet in the deepening two-front Middle East crisis.” “Israeli weaponry rained down on Lebanon throughout the day and into the night, killing 63 people by nightfall,” virtually all civilians, while two Israeli Arab brothers, ages 3 and 9, were killed by Hezbollah rockets “as they played outside in Nazareth.”

After promising to make its unconstitutional military commissions comply with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the White House yesterday took a “harder line” and announced it would propose “only minor changes” to the tribunals. Read more