Demagogue

Last week, the mainstream media had very little to say about the Bush administration's decision to pick up its marbles and stroll angrily from the playground.

The State Department made an announcement that the U.S. would no longer recognize the protocol that gave an international tribunal the jurisdiction to hear disputes over the incarceration of Mexican nationals. The announcement followed an international tribunal's decision last year ordering new hearings for 51 Mexicans on death rows in the U.S.

I appreciated these dueling quotes from the New York Times story:

… Darla Jordan, a State Department spokeswoman, said the administration was troubled by foreign interference in the domestic capital justice system but intended to fulfill its obligations under international law.

But Ms. Jordan said, "We are protecting against future International Court of Justice judgments that might similarly interfere in ways we did not anticipate when we joined the optional protocol."

Peter J. Spiro, a law professor at the University of Georgia, said the withdrawal was unbecoming.

"It's a sore-loser kind of move," Professor Spiro said. "If we can't win, we're not going to play."

On the right-wing blog Free Republic, some neanderthal posted a reaction to the Spiro quote, saying that the professor "[s]ounds like a globalist who hates the idea of US sovereignty ..."

Yep. Someone who dares to suggest that the U.S. might actually abide by the jurisdiction of an international tribunal that it recognized for 40 years must secretly hate America.