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Dobbs on Bush

Sandhusker

Well-known member
Diehard GOP faithful, the dwindling number of Bush loyalists and political pundits of every stripe and medium seem obsessed these days with defining or discerning the "legacy of George W. Bush."

Frankly, I spend more time worrying about whether or not the United States can survive the remaining 15 months of his ebbing presidency.

There is little mystery about what future historians will consider to be the legacy of the 43rd president of the United States. Those historians are certain to describe the first presidential administration of the 21st century with terms such as dissipation and perversion.

Bush campaigned for the Republican Party's nomination eight years ago, styling himself as a compassionate conservative. He's amply demonstrated that he is neither.

Although many conservatives refuse to accept the reality, George W. Bush is a one-world neo-liberal who drove budget and trade deficits to record heights while embracing faith-based economic policies that perversely require only blind allegiance to free markets and free trade, without regard for consequence.

This president pursues a war without demanding of his generals either success or victory and accepts the sacrifice of our brave young men and women in uniform while asking nothing of our people or the nation at a time of war.

Sadly, this president has diminished a great nation and may diminish it further.

President Bush has pressed hard for the Security and Prosperity Partnership, the first step toward a North American Union that will threaten our sovereignty. This administration has permitted American businesses to hire illegal aliens, encouraged the invasion of 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens and has given Mexico and corporate America dominion over our borders and our immigration policy.

Were it not for an outraged public, the Bush administration would have been happy to cede control of our ports to a Dubai government-owned company.

The assault on our national sovereignty continues: At a time when public approval of the White House and Congress is near historic lows, the president is urging the Senate to act favorably on our accession to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

One hundred fifty-five nations have ratified the Law of the Sea Treaty, which essentially codifies into law detailed rules about freedom of the seas and the extent of territorial waters. The treaty also establishes an international bureaucracy to regulate deep-sea mining.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently heard arguments on the 1982 Law of the Sea Treaty, which President Ronald Reagan rejected but President Bill Clinton submitted to the Senate in 1994. A vote is likely in the weeks ahead, and this Democratic-controlled Senate is the same institution whose leadership sought passage of the disastrous comprehensive immigration overhaul legislation.

And just as this administration trotted out an Army general to support the Dubai Ports World fiasco and a Marine Corps general to support the administration's immigration proposal, it's now pressured the U.S. Navy to support this treaty.

Bush says the treaty "will secure U.S. sovereign rights over extensive marine areas, including the valuable natural resources they contain." The president could not be more wrong.

This treaty will submit the United States to international tribunals largely adverse to our interests, and the dispute resolution mechanisms are stacked against the United States. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina, astutely argues that nearly all the signatories "have voted against the United States over half the time [at the United Nations]."

This administration can do nothing straightforwardly and perverts language at every turn. Take, for example, the words of Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte arguing in support of the treaty. "As a non-party," he argues, "We are not currently in a position to maximize U.S. sovereign rights over the shelf in the Arctic or elsewhere."

Negroponte's tortured reasoning is entirely consistent with this administration's intellectual performance over almost two terms in office, but it serves neither the truth nor the national interest.

The Law of the Sea Treaty would undermine our national sovereignty and act as a back door for global environmental activists to direct U.S. policy.

It would hold the United States to yet another unaccountable international bureaucracy and constrain our national prerogatives. Aside from that, the treaty is wholly unnecessary. The U.S. Navy already enjoys international navigation rights by customary practice.

Our elected officials in both political parties and the national media should worry less about the legacy of this lame-duck president and far more about the future of a great nation and people debilitated by his ruinous leadership.
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
I listened to Glenn Beck last night, this Law of the Sea Treaty (L.O.S.T.)
is really bad. We are most likely eventually going to lose our sovereignity if this passes.
A congressman that Glenn Beck interviewed said it wouldn't appear
to be so bad, right away, but it will wind up being disasterous for our country.

And I don't know enough about it to discuss it, so you guys have at it.
:shock:
I appreciate Glenn Beck, he is a straight-shooter and brings out things
that get passed up by other news stations.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Here is what the Heritage Foundation says about it-- besides it giving up sovereignty to a new UN type organization (which the US taxpayer likely will end up funding the most of, like the UN)-- but they also promote much of the "greenies" agenda....Sounds like an Al Gore special--but in the name of pushing forward his New World Order- GW backs it....

Thanks again GW :( :mad:

October 16, 2007
They Just Don't Get LOST
by Edwin J. Feulner, Ph.D.
This year a Democratic majority took power on Capitol Hill. But new leadership has done nothing to address an old problem: Lawmakers racing to pass bills they haven't actually read.

Recall the Senate's ill-fated immigration reform bill last spring. Senators didn't bother to hold committee hearings on the measure. Had they done so, they'd have realized it would have granted amnesty to millions of illegal aliens. Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation did read the bill, and calculated it would cost taxpayers $2.6 trillion.

That bill died without a vote, because the more that senators learned about it, the less they liked it.

But that raises the question, "Are lawmakers paying attention?" Because sometimes even a proposal that's been around forever manages to crawl forward, without anyone seeming to have read it.

Consider the Law of the Sea Treaty.

President Reagan first scuttled LOST back in 1982 because it would've hurt American sovereignty. But President Clinton brought it back in the 1990s, and the treaty's been floating around Capitol Hill ever since. Now, mistakenly, the Bush administration has endorsed LOST, and the full Senate may soon consider it.

But in 25 years, has anybody bothered to look beyond the title? Experts who have know that LOST would create a bureaucratic International Seabed Authority with the power to regulate trade, exploration and mining in the world's oceans.

This authority would basically be an aquatic United Nations of the sea (indeed, LOST is a U.N. convention). Except, instead of issuing toothless condemnations of the U.S., this authority would have the actual power to thwart American interests. For example, the treaty would give environmental activists the power to bring action against the U.S. for violating the Kyoto Protocol, even though the Senate never ratified that accord and senators sensibly made it clear they wouldn't agree to Kyoto if it would harm American economic interests.

But LOST wouldn't stop even at the water's edge.

During a recent Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Sen. David Vitter, R-La., asked State Department Legal Adviser John Bellinger III whether the treaty would cover pollution from land-based sources. "We've worked our way through the treaty. We are confident that pollution from land-based sources would not be subject to the jurisdiction of the tribunals or arbitral panels," Bellinger assured the committee.

But Vitter seems to have, amazingly enough, read LOST. "I would point you to Section 6, Article 213, page 176, which is about enforcement with respect to pollution from land-based sources," the senator said. "It seems to me the very title of that article at least sets up a prima facie case that your statement isn't correct."

Indeed, Vitter -- not the State Department lawyer who's supposed to be the expert on this treaty -- is correct. The treaty insists that any country that signs it will be required to pass "laws and regulations to prevent, reduce and control pollution of the marine environment from or through the atmosphere."

The problem is that once the Senate ratifies a treaty, we're bound by the entire thing, not just those parts we agree with. That's a point that came up recently during Supreme Court arguments in Medellin v. Texas. Our country "accepted the authority of this tribunal, and to be bound to follow its decisions," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said. A treaty thus supersedes state laws.

Our republican form of government requires lawmakers who carefully consider the consequences of every law they pass and every treaty they approve. Senators should take a few hours to actually read the Law of the Sea treaty before they put it to a vote. If they do, there's little doubt that this bad proposal will be beached.

Ed Feulner is president of The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org).
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed101607f.cfm
 
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