However, who of us does not have a difficult significant other in the distant past? There has to be a statute of limitations on this sort ofthing, and my vote would be for a decade, max.The government checked Aponte and found no nefarious Cuban connection. She broke upwith Tamayo in 1994 and has received several top-secret security clearances since. She hasmany supporters who say she's terrific, including Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey,who is second to none in his sensitivity on Cuban-related issues. Her supporters cite a list of UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05784588 Date: 12/31/2015achievements during her brief tenure as ambassador, one of which was getting El Salvadorto send troops to Afghanistan. (Who knew?)It's always been hard to get Obama appointees past Senate Republicans. Remember the time when then-Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky held up the confirmation of the deputy U.S.trade representative because he was angry at Canada for banning the sale of candy-flavoredtobacco? Or when Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama held up 70-plus pending nominations because he wanted to make sure a new F.B.I. explosives testing facility would be located inHuntsville?Those were the good-old days.Now the Senate Republicans appear to be gripped by more cosmic grievances. This week,they blocked the appointment of Richard Cordray, a former Ohio attorney general, to leadthe Consumer Financial Protectio'n Bureau because they disapprove of the ConsumerFinancial Protection Bureau. Which the Senate approved, with some Republican support, ayear and a half ago.The Republicans say the bureau, which has never been allowed to do anything, needs to bereined in. "I talked to the Senate historian, who said never in the history of the United StatesSenate has one political party tried to block the nomination of a presidential appointee basedon wanting to change the agency," protested Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio during theSenate debate. To no effect whatsoever.Also this week; the Republicans blocked Caitlin Halligan, a moderate and well-qualifiednominee to the federal court, with arguments that the District of Columbia Circuit Court ofAppeals, to which Halligan was nominated, has too light a workload.But about Aponte. The administration had, at one time, hoped to lure Senator Marco Rubioof Florida into supporting the nomination because of her backing in the Hispaniccommunity. However, Rubio recently announced that he will not only oppose Aponte, butalso the proposed new ambassador to Ecuador, and pretty much any nominee that hasanything to do with the Western Hemisphere, because he disapproves of the administration'sLatin America policy.This is what is known as spreading a wide net.Whenever these things happen, the Democrats race off to try to placate the aggrievedRepublican. They gave DeMint access to Aponte's F.B.I. file, even though instances ofDeMint's being placated by anything are about as frequent as confirmed sightings of spacealiens. UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05784588 Date: 12/31/2015DeMint then complained that the file was out of date. But, by then, he seemed to be losinginterest in the boyfriend issue and had moved on to fuming that while she was in Elpeople on the need to accept and support the gay lifestyle." Actually,