K-Lo, who reads Reuters so most of the rest of us don’t have to, notes the following:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United Nations Human Rights Committee on Friday urged U.S. lawmakers to give the District of Columbia a voting member of Congress, saying the lack of such representation appeared inconsistent with international law.
Ummmmmmmmmmm….it’s only in our Constitution and has been since long before the UN was even a gleam in anybody’s eye.
The correct response is to tell District residents that if they want to be represented, move to Maryland or Virginia.
In fact, my solution to the problem is for the Federal government to cede the entire remaining District, except for the purely Federal areas, back to Maryland. I’ve been saying that ever since I lived out there in 1995.
Of course the most curious thing about this is that the UN Human Rights Committee would have the balls to tell anyone in this country that we have a human rights problem. Don’t they have better things to do anyway? How about Sudan, and Zimbabwe, and Cuba, and China, for instance, where lack of representation is not just keeping people down, but in many cases is actually killing them?
Oh, wait. Aren’t they all members of that committee?
And what the fuck is this?
Timothy Cooper, executive director of Worldrights, said the statement also could provide the basis for legal challenges to the prohibition on voting representation.
“No longer can the U.S. hide from its international obligations,” Cooper said. “It should act to right this human rights wrong without delay.”
How exactly does a purely internal US constitutional matter have anything to do with international obligations?
You guys must have seriously brass ones. Or think you do.