.bmp)
.bmp)
Sen. Barbara Boxer is urging the U.S. to ratify a United Nations measure meant to expand the rights of children, a move critics are calling a gross assault on parental rights that could rob the U.S. of sovereignty.The California Democrat is pushing the Obama administration to review the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, a nearly 20-year-old international agreement that has been foundering on American shores since it was signed by the Clinton administration in 1995 but never ratified.Critics say the treaty, which creates "the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion" and outlaws the "arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy," intrudes on the family and strips parents of the power to raise their children without government interference.Nearly every country in the world is party to it-only the U.S. and Somalia are not-but the convention has gained little support in the U.S. and never been sent to the Senate for ratification.That could change soon.Boxer has made clear her intent to revive the ratification process under the Obama administration, which may be amenable to the move. During a Senate confirmation hearing last month, Boxer said she considers it "a humiliation" that the U.S. is "standing with Somalia" in refusing to become party to the agreement, while 193 other nations have led the way.The U.S. is already party to two optional pieces of the treaty regarding child soldiers and child prostitution and pornography, but has refused to sign on to the full agreement, something which has rankled members of Congress, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders."Children deserve basic human rights...and the convention protects children's rights by setting some standards here so that the most vulnerable people of society will be protected," Boxer said.The convention has established a Committee on the Rights of the Child, an 18-member panel in Geneva composed of "persons of high moral character" who review the rights of children in nations that are party to the convention.But legal experts say the convention does nothing to protect human rights abroad-and that acceding to the convention would erode U.S. sovereignty.Because of the Supremacy Clause in Article VI of the Constitution, all treaties are rendered "the supreme law of the land," superseding preexisting state and federal statutes. Any rights or laws established by the U.N. convention could then be argued to hold sway in the United States."To the extent that an outside body, a group of unaccountable so-called experts in Switzerland have a say over how children in America should be raised, educated and disciplined-that is an erosion of American sovereignty," said Steven Groves, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.Parental rights groups are similarly stirred; they see in the U.N. convention a threat that the government will meddle with even the simplest freedoms to raise their children as they see fit."Whether you ground your kids for smoking marijuana, whether you take them to church, whether you let them go to junior prom, all of those things...will be the government's decision," said Michael Farris, president of ParentalRights.org. "It will affect every parent who's told their children to do the dishes."Groves said that erosion has already begun, as the Supreme Court has referred to the wide acceptance of the child-rights law in conferring legal protections on minors in the U.S.Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing the majority opinion in the 2005 decision banning the death penalty for minors, noted that "every country in the world has ratified [the convention] save for the United States and Somalia."By Joseph Abrams
To read more go to:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/02/25/boxer-seeks-ratify-treaty-erode-rights/
As in the days of Noah....
