Demagogue

Two years ago, the White House announced

John Marshall Evans, of the District of Columbia, a Career Member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Minister-Counselor, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of Armenia.

In February 2005, Evans has the audacity to acknowledge that the deaths of some 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey in 1915 was "genocide" - a designation Turkey vehemently opposes.

As the LA Times noted in March

JOHN EVANS IS THE U.S. ambassador to Armenia, as of this writing. But he probably won't be for long. Evans, a career diplomat who was selected to receive an American Foreign Service Assn. award last year for his frank public speaking, irked his superiors at the State Department by uttering the following words at UC Berkeley in February 2005: "I will today call it the Armenian genocide." For that bit of truth-telling, Evans was forced to issue a clarification, then a correction, then to endure having his award rescinded under pressure from his bosses, and finally to face losing his job altogether.

The LA Times was right, because yesterday the White House announced

The President intends to nominate Richard E. Hoagland, of the District of Columbia, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of Armenia.