Remember the Dung Beetle Caucus that wrapped up their GOP 2012 debacle by rejecting the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities? Well, the treaty is back, and so are the Dung Beetles. From Reuters:
A U.S. Senate committee voted on Tuesday to advance a U.N. treaty to protect people with disabilities from discrimination, but the agreement faces a tough fight winning the two-thirds majority needed for ratification by the full Senate…
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 12-6 in favor of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Only two Republicans, John McCain of Arizona and John Barrasso of Wyoming, joined the panel’s 10 Democrats in favor.
The treaty is supported by leading US military veterans organizations, advocates for the rights of people with disabilities and business groups.
Opponents, including many socially conservative Republicans, worry it could expand abortion rights, threaten U.S. parental rights such as the ability to home-school children, and shift power to the federal government from U.S. states.
The treaty’s backers dismissed those concerns and accused opponents of injecting divisive social issues into the debate to score political points…
To press the issue, McCain and other treaty backers scheduled a news conference on Wednesday with representatives of veterans organizations, including the American Legion and Vietnam Veterans of America, and former Kansas Senator Bob Dole, a wounded war veteran who has championed the international accord…
Here’s Bob Dole, as quoted in Politico:
… This marks the second time the former senator will square off against Mike Farris, president of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, on the same issue: an international treaty on rights for people with disabilities.
Farris mounted a public campaign against the treaty when the Senate took it up in 2012, fanning concerns among prominent conservatives like Rick Santorum and the Heritage Foundation that it could infringe on the rights of parents whose children have disabilities, threaten states’ rights and become a legal tool for pro-choice advocates pushing against restrictive abortion laws.
Proponents maintained that the treaty would have no effect on American law, but the detractors proved stronger: The treaty fell short of being ratified by five votes…
Dole, who was injured while fighting in World War II and had been struggling with his health at the time of the vote, was on the Senate floor in a wheelchair when it failed.
“He’s quite a machine,” Dole said of Farris…
Yeah, were it not for the Eleventh Commandment, I think the word Senator Dole might be searching for is tool. Michael Farris, “constitutional lawyer“, founder of the Home School Legal Defense Association and Patrick Henry College, has made a very profitable career for himself out of ginning up the far-right “religious” paranoids who see black helicopters hovering over every suburban golf course and LGBT Stalinists overrunning every public classroom.
He’s Glenn Beck, with a better education (the benefits of which he diligently works to deny others). And I sincerely hope that when karma catches up with him and his own health fails, none of his ten children ever come to visit him… but Clayton Kelly does.
Mnemosyne
If you’re not familiar with them, the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) are scum. Fucking scum.
Suffern ACE
How on earth would this treaty threaten home schooling?
Mnemosyne
@Suffern ACE:
It would threaten abusive homeschooling parents’ ability to abuse their disabled children without fear of the law. It would make zero difference for non-abusive homeschooling parents, and would probably even make their lives easier.
Michael Farris and HSLDA exist to facilitate child abuse, so that’s why they oppose this. If you think I’m exaggerating, follow my link above and read the multiple links there.
PurpleGirl
@efgoldman: Righteous rant there.
(BTW, how was your wife’s birthday dinner? I hope the two of you enjoyed yourselves.)
Big R
I knew Mike Farris when I was coaching collegiate moot court. He killed my proposed case problem because he didn’t understand the legal issues, and was worried he couldn’t adequately prepare his students.
A legitimate complaint, except that collegiate moot court is a closed universe research problem. For the uninitiated, that means the problem authors give a list of about ten sources that are relevant to the problem, and no one is allowed to go beyond that list. He refused to read ten cases to know enough about an issue to help his kids prepare.
Also, when the issue in the case problem was gay marriage, Farris threatened to pull out of the competition because teams have to argue both sides. His precious home schooled conservative snowflakes would have had to pretend that they supported gay marriage for as much as half an hour at a time!
Of course, what was really going on was the continued echo chamber. If the kids had to read the cases on equal protection and think about them in the context of gay marriage, they might realize how dumb their parents and pastors are.
Comrade Dread
Any UN treaty is really just the prelude to a one-world socialist government under the control of the Anti-Christ, so you know, it must be opposed so we can continue to reset the apocalyptic clock and keep Euro-Satan from stealing all our golfs.
The Dangerman
Forget it, Jake, it’s the Republicans; unless I missed something, they were celebrating eliminating any Federal Subsidies for Obamacare in some states…
…but the mandate stays in place. That should go over well in all those states.
Big R
Also, I can’t link from the mobile device, but Patrick Henry College has real problems with sexual assault on campus.
Correction: a single link: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116623/sexual-assault-patrick-henry-college-gods-harvard
mai naem
When I saw Patrick Henry College, I seem to remember some kind of recent scandal. Sure enough, did the google and found out PHC was where the Dean was either covering up or minimizing sexual assaults on campus. Ofcourse, their darling little Home Schooled Christian virgin boys wouldn’t commit sexual assaults.
What a bunch of whiny pussies on the GOP end of the Foreign Relations Committee. That includes Manly Men Marco Rubio, Jeff Flake and Bob Corker. What a bunch of dicks.
Jay
Yeah, were it not for the Eleventh Commandment, I think the word Senator Dole might be searching for is tool.
No, I think he meant machine. A tool is something you use. A machine is something that uses you…
Mnemosyne
@Big R:
You might find this (long) article from the American Prospect interesting — at least some of the homeschooling survivors came up through that debate system and ended up rejecting fundamentalist Christianity despite Farris’s attempts to shield them from the real world. One of the former debaters, Ryan Stollar, is the co-founder of Homeschoolers Anonymous.
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
Link for you in immediately previous thread which you might enjoy (#144).
boatboy_srq
@efgoldman: Remarkable, isn’t it, how they can couch the collective scr3wing of 300 million people as preserving their lives and liberties? No treaty is agreeable because it might hinder the Reichwing’s desperate desire to keep Teh Poors, Teh Wimmins and Teh Others down, yet the treaty is sold as somehow making their special peeps’ lives more difficult – which come to think of it could be said of Civil Rights, the 13th/14th/15th/19th Amendments, the Emancipation Proclamation, etc. This is why Tentherism is so dangerous: by voiding any amendment after the first ten they get away with reinstating all manner of nastiness simply because the Great and Holy Founding Fathers didn’t think it was necessary, appropriate or politic to explicitly prohibit it.
JGabriel
Reuters:
Because red states are doing such a bang-up job of managing their economies and helping the disabled.
tybee
kingston lost his senate bid last night. i has a happy.
that’s one dung beetle that won’t be returning.
Cervantes
@efgoldman:
Careful. The anxiety could destroy your marriage.
Cervantes
@efgoldman:
See? If not for your having to defend gay marriage tonight, that “t” might well have been a “d.”
Baud
Today show going after Michael Moore for being rich.
another Holocene human
@Mnemosyne: They’re like MRAs: total crickets on human rights issues that affect men but big time support for domestic abusers getting custody of children.
Note also all of the criminals including murderers involved in the threeper (rebranded militia) movement.
Jay
The Dung Beetle Caucus! LOL!
I’m pretty sure Master Cole would call these guys “The Bath Salt Caucus.”
btw, didn’t “The Bath Salt Caucus” begin as an Alan Grayson-ism? Regardless, it should be a tag around here.
PS: Good luck to you in your fight, Cole.
AdrianLesher
Dung beetles are industrious insects with an attractive jewel-like carapace. I am sure they are insulted by the implicit comparison.
Dog On Porch
The mocking laughter you can distinctly hear is from today’s republican party, from top to bottom, as it collectively pisses on Bob Dole’s shattered arm.
Why? Why is it considered too much to ask of today’s democratic party politicians to make some LOUD noise about virtually everything the GOP stands for? Certainly this legislation can move the old outrage-o-meter among decent Americans. So what’s stopping them?
It’s an eminently fair question: why don’t today’s democratic politicians make political hay of the GOP’s infinite infirmities? Those that attempt to defend or explain their behavior should be tarred, feathered, and run out of town.
Every hour around the clock the airwaves are filled with republican party invective. Is that it? Are democrats that chickenshit?
The question is rhetorical. I know the answer.
ecodrew
@Mnemosyne: Holy sh!t, I need brain bleach after reading that link.