Yesterday the Senate rejected an
international treaty to protect the rights of disabled people around the world—a treaty ratified by nations all over the planet. In case you ever wondered what “American exceptionalism” means, it evidently means that, alone among nations, we can reject common sense humane laws in order to maintain the paranoid fantasies of the craziest of our people.
Rick Santorum said
the treaty could violate the rights of parents who homeschool disabled children. The treaty says that the disabled should have the same rights and freedoms as anyone else. I don’t know, but if there was an evil conspiracy to attack American homeschoolers, I think they would have chosen a different tactic to launch the assault. Republicans said the treaty could pose a threat to US sovereignty. If agreeing not to hassle disabled people poses a threat to US sovereignty, then all I can say is that US sovereignty must be hanging by a very thin thread. By the way, the treaty is modeled after our own “Americans with Disabilities Act.” So obviously, this was some backdoor way to try and introduce American law into America!
Bob Costas is
standing by the comments he made about America’s obsession with guns. Costas stressed that he wasn’t calling for gun control, just for a candid conversation about guns. I can just see the gun nut bumper stickers now: “I’ll have a candid conversation about guns when they remove my cold, dead tongue from the buttocks of the NRA.” Costas said he was talking about “gun culture,” not gun control or the Second Amendment. Doesn’t he realize that the Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment specifically to foster a gun culture? Thomas Jefferson always envisioned a nation of yeoman farmers… armed to the teeth. How do you think that Benjamin Franklin ended up discovering electricity? He was trying to build a gun that shot lightning!
Costas asked for “one example of a professional athlete who by virtue of his having a gun, took a dangerous situation and turned it around for the better.” Well, Plaxico Burress accidentally shot himself in the thigh when his gun went off in his pocket at a nightclub. If Burress didn’t have that gun... his thigh would have gotten away.
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