By a vote of 17-4 today, a Senate Panel approved to move forward to bring this to the full Senate. The Law of the Sea Treaty is a dangerous grab at American sovereignty and its U.S. ratification needs to be stopped.

This was first proposed during the Reagan Administration and he objected to it for three very good reasons:

• Former President Reagan’s first objection to the Treaty was the Principle of the “Common Heritage of Mankind,” which dictates that oceanic resources should be shared among all mankind and cannot be claimed by any one nation or people. In order to achieve this goal, the Treaty creates the International Seabed Authority (”Authority”) to regulate and exploit mineral resources. It requires a company to submit an application fee of $500,000 (now $250,000), as well as a bonus site for the Authority to utilize for its own mining efforts. Additionally, the corporation must pay an annual fee of $1 million, as well as a percentage of its profits (increasing annually up to 7%), and must agree to share mining and navigational technology–thereby ensuring that opportunities aren’t restricted to more technologically advanced countries. The decision to grant or to withhold mining permits is decided by the Authority, which consists disproportionately of underdeveloped countries. Technology-sharing is no longer mandatory, however, there are remaining “principles” to guide its use and distribution. Additionally, the Council has been restructured so that the United States has a permanent seat, and developed countries can create a blocking vote.
• Secondly, former President Reagan believed that the Treaty would restrict the world’s supply of minerals. The Treaty was originally designed to limit the exploitation of heavy minerals in order to protect the mineral sales of land-locked, developing nations. This is no longer a severe limitation, because production limits to preserve land-based mining have been removed.
• The third–and still valid–objection is that mandatory dispute resolution restricts autonomy. Either a U.N. court or tribunal must mandate maritime issues involving fisheries, marine environmental protection, and preservation, research, and navigation. A country may opt out if the dispute involves maritime boundaries, military, or limited law enforcement activities. Submitting to external jurisdiction creates an uncomfortable precedent. Furthermore, it weakens the U.S. argument of autonomy when it refuses to submit to the International Criminal Court. Additionally, a country must petition to be excluded from mandatory jurisdiction requirements.
• The Heritage Foundation
  

The Democrats (as well as idiots like Dick Lugar) are behind this, of course, because they’ll get behind anything that weakens America’s standing in the world.  Trent Lott and John Kyl seems fairly certain that there won’t be enough affirmative votes in the Senate to ratify it.  For a treaty, two-thirds is required. Bush is also pushing this to be signed. As usual, he doesn’t pass up a chance to sell out our sovereignty.

Regardless of the fate of his 2008 long-shot White House bid, Representative Tom Tancredo said Monday that he would not seek another term in Congress. The five-term Colorado congressman’s retirement from Congress marks the latest addition to a long list of GOP retirements announced so far for 2008. Tancredo, 61, for whom fighting illegal immigration has become his signature issue, said the issue has come to the fore and no longer needs to be promoted as he has done.

RTT News

I am really going to miss having Tancredo in the House.  He has been one of the staunchest conservative voices in the Republican Party since the day he took office and his retirement, while good for him, is our loss in Washington.

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is under fire from Jewish groups after a speech he gave at a pro-life event the weekend before last. In the address to the Family Research Council, the former Arkansas governor referred to the deaths of 45-50 million unborn children from abortion as a holocaust.

In the speech, he linked the issues of abortion and illegal immigration — saying the destruction of tens of millions of unborn children has left the U.S. with a worker shortage.

“Sometimes we talk about why we’re importing so many people in our work force,” Huckabee said in the speech.

“It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our work force had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973,” he explained.

Life News

I don’t see the problem here.  Is what he said not true?  While the exact number will never be known, roughly 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust.  Since 1973, when the Supreme Court wrongly decided Roe ( to which Darth Vader Ginsburg herself has admitted is bad law) over 46 million lives have been snuffed out and slaughtered.  Many had sharp objects stabbed through their heads and their bodies dismembered and sucked out of a womb with a vacuum cleaner, thrown into a pan, and dumped into an incinerator.  That sounds a lot like a Holocaust type tragedy to me.

Mitt Romney’s campaign tells The Brody File that Bill Wichterman, who used to do conservative and religious outreach for Fred Thompson’s campaign, has joined Team Romney. This is a nice “get.” He’ll be a part of the Faith and Values steering committee.

Bill Wichterman left the Thompson campaign because Thompson DOES NOT support the federal marriage amendment. At least the version that is on the table now. Mitt Romney does support it. Wichterman liked that fit. Who can blame him?

CBN News

If it’s true that Thompson does not support the Federal Marriage Amendment then I say good for him.  I don’t support it either.  If I had my way, the Federal government would have absolutely no involvement in marriage.  It’s a state’s issue and let the state’s decide it.  If Massachusetts wants to let gays marry fine.  If South Carolina doesn’t, that’s fine too.  Just as long as a state that doesn’t legalize gay marriage isn’t forced to recognize one done in another state, I have no problem with it.