According to the Web site The Washington Note, it is.

The Washington Note's Steve Clemons writes that "Several well-placed sources close to the Bolton nomination process have reported to me that the Bolton confirmation process is now dead. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is 'highly unlikely' to reconsider Bolton's confirmation again as things now stand. One insider reported, as far as the Committee is concerned, 'we consider the confirmation over. It's dead.'"

And according to this morning's Providence Journal, Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee was in fact a key player in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's decision to postpone yesterday's vote.

Last year, Senator Chafee was said to have criticized Bolton but that he continued to support his nomination. The senator's spokesman Stephen Hourahan said that "Senator Chafee said he still had questions that were not answered," most notably regarding recent developments in the Middle East such as the war in Lebanon and the creation of new settlements in the West Bank.

The Providence Journal also reports that Senator Chafee sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice yesterday, which outlined his "serious questions about this Administration's policies in the Middle East," rather than questioning Bolton's qualifications and attributes.

"I have been a long-time critic of the disparity between the rhetoric and the actions of the administration on the subject of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process," Senator Chafee said in the letter. "It is my hope that answers will be forthcoming about our policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" so that the committee "can reconvene to debate Ambassador Bolton's nomination."