WaPo article on Law of the Sea and JK

[MBS]

Article on the senate hearings and (dim) prospects for passage. I am SOOOOOOO sick of the small-minded, obstructuionist Republican mindset. It has done SO much damage to our country -- even more than the horrible things they've tried to do, it's the things that we haven't been able to do, especially vis a vis the environment; because of these close-minded dimwits, we've lost precious time dealing with urgent problems, and fallen behind other nations on topics where we should be leading the way. It's an absolute disgrace that we've not yet ratified this treaty. Just outrageous.

So outrageous that, compared to Flat-Earth-Caucus senators like Inhofe and others quoted in this article, that Palin, of all people, comes off as reasonable, at least in the 2007 statement quoted here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fine-print-treaty-on-the-seas-is-in-rough-senate-waters/2012/05/28/gJQAzCyFxU_story.html

Here are some JK bits.

“Everyone is entitled to his opinion, but not to his own facts,” goes the maxim popularized by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.).

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, used it last week in introducing the latest effort to get the Senate to pass the Law of the Sea Convention.
. . .The treaty was amended in 1994 during the Clinton administration to meet the Reagan objections. Both the Clinton White House and George W. Bush’s administration in 2004 and ’07, along with a bipartisan group of senators, supported ratification. Nonetheless it failed to come to a vote.

Why? As then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin wrote in a Sept. 17, 2007, letter to her state’s Republican senators, “Ratification has been thwarted by a small group of senators who are concerned about the perceived loss of U.S. sovereignty.”

Today, another small group is at it again, forcing Kerry to postpone any Senate vote on ratification until after the November elections. A two-thirds majority is required.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton testified Wednesday before the foreign relations panel, along with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey. She said it was being raised again because of “security and economic urgency.”