Powell resigns

Colin Powell, Spence Abraham, Ann Venaman, Rod Paige, Don Evans, John Ashcroft. That's the current headcount of Bush Cabinet members who are resigning. Paige and Ashcroft are highly regretted losses. Powell is not -- despite his high Q rating among the press and the punditry, Powell's diplomatic interaction was simply minimalist -- he traveled less than virtually any SecState since the advent of air travel, and this has hurt US efforts abroad. Indeed, some of the US's best diplomatic initiatives are Powell-free, most notably the Proliferation Security Initiative -- an argument in itself to promote John Bolton to SecState.

As for Abraham, hopefully he will go back to Michigan and knock Jennifer Granholm out of the governor's chair in 2006. He's a credible moderate conservative who unfortunately lost his Senate seat to the mendacious Debbie Stabenow in 2000. Maybe he's priming for a Senate rematch -- if so, that would be nice because Michigan is a moderate state that is ill-served by two left-wing obstructionists in the Senate chamber.