California Senator Barbara Boxer (D) has decided to throw her panties into the ring with a resurrection of the old call to review the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.
This little feel-good little international agreement has been (rightly) ignored by the United States and also ignored by Somolia; it has since proven ineffective, in large part due to the U.N. process of allowing reservations, understandings and declarations; in effect lodged protests over viability, that are most often intended to hinder or negate responsibilities under any such agreement. The U.N. itself admits it is in no position to enforce compliance, and this is certainly proven out by, for example, the continued abuse of children (and women) in the Middle East.
But despite the fact that United States has its own laws that protect minors, Senator Boxer thinks that we should now additionally legislate our treatment of our children, as would be determined by the Committee on the Rights of the Child. This 18-member panel in Geneva is composed of “persons of high moral character” who review the rights of children in nations that are party to the convention.
As is evidenced by so many examples of U.N. …ummmm…let’s use the weasel words “ethics and morality”, Senator Boxer is barking up the wrong tree. While sovereignty of the United States should not be used as argument*, what should be argued is the uselessness and waste of Congressional time and effort to pursue this nonsense. Anything involving the United Nations should, frankly, be tabled; if not permanently, at least until we have our own house in some semblance of order.
What Senator Boxer is doing is sending Americans off on a snipe hunt while the real threat – Congress and the President and their “plans” to steer us through this economic mess created by other presidents and Congress critters by making it worse – is able to make their moves unnoticed.
Her desperate ploy for attention should be seen for what it is and soundly, roundly ignored.
* – Supremacy Clause in Article VI of the Constitution: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”
Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957): “This Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty.”
“There is nothing in [the Constitution] which intimates that treaties and laws enacted pursuant to [it] do not have to comply with the provisions of the Constitution. Nor is there anything in the debates which accompanied the drafting and ratification of the Constitution which even suggests such a result. These debates as well as the history that surrounds the adoption of the treaty provision in Article VI make it clear that the reason treaties were not limited to those made in “pursuance” of the Constitution was so that agreements made by the United States under the Articles of Confederation, including the important peace treaties which concluded the Revolutionary War, would remain in effect. It would be manifestly contrary to the objectives of those who created the Constitution, as well as those who were responsible for the Bill of Rights—let alone alien to our entire constitutional history and tradition—to construe Article VI as permitting the United States to exercise power under an international agreement without observing constitutional prohibitions. In effect, such construction would permit amendment of that document in a manner not sanctioned by Article V. The prohibitions of the Constitution were designed to apply to all branches of the National Government and they cannot be nullified by the Executive or by the Executive and the Senate combined.”
(Justice Hugo L. Black’s opinion for the United States Supreme Court)