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United Nations’ threat: No more parental rights
Posted: February 05, 2009 12:00 am Eastern By Chelsea Schilling © 2009 WorldNetDaily
A United Nations human rights treaty that could prohibit children from being spanked or homeschooled, ban youngsters from facing the death penalty and forbid parents from deciding their families’ religion is on America’s doorstep, a legal expert warns.
Michael Farris of Purcellville, Va., is president of ParentalRights.org, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association and chancellor of Patrick Henry College. He told WND that under the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, or CRC, every decision a parent makes can be reviewed by the government to determine whether it is in the child’s best interest.
"It’s definitely on our doorstep," he said. "The left wants to make the Obama-Clinton era permanent. Treaties are a way to make it as permanent as stuff gets. It is very difficult to extract yourself from a treaty once you begin it. If they can put all of their left-wing socialist policies into treaty form, we’re stuck with it even if they lose the next election."
The 1990s-era document was ratified quickly by 193 nations worldwide, but not the United States or Somalia. In Somalia, there was then no recognized government to do the formal recognition, and in the United States there’s been opposition to its power. Countries that ratify the treaty are bound to it by international law.
Although signed by Madeleine Albright, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., on Feb. 16, 1995, the U.S. Senate never ratified the treaty, largely because of conservatives’ efforts to point out it would create that list of rights which primarily would be enforced against parents.
The international treaty creates specific civil, economic, social, cultural and even economic rights for every child and states that "the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration." It is monitored by the CRC, which conceivably has enforcement powers.
According to the Parental Rights website, the substance of the CRC dictates the following:
* Parents would no longer be able to administer reasonable spankings to their children.
* A murderer aged 17 years, 11 months and 29 days at the time of his crime could no longer be sentenced to life in prison.
* Children would have the ability to choose their own religion while parents would only have the authority to give their children advice about religion.
* The best interest of the child principle would give the government the ability to override every decision made by every parent if a government worker disagreed with the parent’s decision.
* A child’s "right to be heard" would allow him (or her) to seek governmental review of every parental decision with which the child disagreed.
* According to existing interpretation, it would be illegal for a nation to spend more on national defense than it does on children’s welfare.
* Children would acquire a legally enforceable right to leisure.
* Teaching children about Christianity in schools has been held to be out of compliance with the CRC.
* Allowing parents to opt their children out of sex education has been held to be out of compliance with the CRC.
* Children would have the right to reproductive health information and services, including abortions, without parental knowledge or consent.
"Where the child has a right fulfilled by the government, the responsibilities shift from parents to the government," Farris said. "The implications of all this shifting of responsibilities is that parents no longer have the traditional roles of either being responsible for their children or having the right to direct their children."
Michael Farris
The government would decide what is in the best interest of a children in every case, and the CRC would be considered superior to state laws, Farris said. Parents could be treated like criminals for making every-day decisions about their children’s lives.
"If you think your child shouldn’t go to the prom because their grades were low, the U.N. Convention gives that power to the government to review your decision and decide if it thinks that’s what’s best for your child," he said. "If you think that your children are too young to have a Facebook account, which interferes with the right of communication, the U.N. gets to determine whether or not your decision is in the best interest of the child."
He continued, "If you think your child should go to church three times a week, but the child wants to go to church once a week, the government gets to decide what it thinks is in the best interest of the children on the frequency of church attendance."
He said American social workers would be the ones responsible for implementation of the policies.
Farris said it could be easier for President Obama to push for ratification of the treaty than it was for the Clinton administration because "the political world has changed."
At a Walden University presidential debate last October, Obama indicated he may take action.
"It’s embarrassing to find ourselves in the company of Somalia, a lawless land," Obama said. "I will review this and other treaties to ensure the United States resumes its global leadership in human rights."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been a strong supporter of the CRC, and she now has direct control over the treaty’s submission to the Senate for ratification. The process requires a two-thirds vote.
Farris said Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., claimed in a private meeting just before Christmas that the treaty would be ratified within two years.
In November, a group of three dozen senior foreign policy figures urged Obama to strengthen U.S. relations with the U.N. Among other things, they asked the president to push for Senate approval of treaties that have been signed by the U.S. but not ratified.
Partnership for a Secure America Director Matthew Rojansky helped draft the statement. He said the treaty commands strong support and is likely to be acted on quickly, according to an Inter Press Service report.
While he said ratification is certain to come up, Farris said advocates of the treaty will face fierce opposition.
"I think it is going to be the battle of their lifetime," he said. "There’s not enough political capital in Washington, D.C., to pass this treaty. We will defeat it."
Obama may become a disaster
(c) American Thinker By James Lewis
By their actions ye shall know them. By now we are seeing an ominous pattern of actions by the O administration. We know that President Obama is a very slick liar indeed, but then so was Bill Clinton. But Clinton had a smaller majority in Congress, and was forced to compromise after the Gingrich Congress was elected in 1994. It is still possible that Obama may turn toward the mainstream. But the early omens look dark.
Foreign and military affairs
There is a reason why Israel s voters are suddenly turning to the center-Right Netanyahu and Likud. They fear that for the first time since Harry Truman, an American administration is turning against the Jewish State. Obama s first phone call after the election was made to Mahmoud Abbas. His first television interview was with Al Arabiya. The appointments of Samantha Power and Susan Rice bode ill for the entire Middle East. A meeting with Hugo Chavez — to negotiate what, exactly? Forthcoming recognition of radical Islamofascist Iran on their terms, not ours, are all ominous straws in the wind. Richard Holbrooke has just infuriated two crucial governments in Pakistan and Afghanistan, by predicting their doom, and still was appointed special envoy to those governments.
The O’s just announced a 10% cut in the planned increase in the defense budget, while the overall budget deficit has just risen by two trillion dollars. That may signal a Carteresque drawdown in our burdened military. This is not the time to lower our guard, but like Jimmy Carter, the O administration is betting against history.
We now know that in violation of Federal law, the Obama campaign started negotiations with Iran, Syria and perhaps Hugo Chavez long before American voters elected O. That flagrant disregard for the law and for simple propriety signals a radical turn Left. If that is accurate, expect the Obama administration to start a scapegoating campaign against Binyamin Netanyahu if he becomes Prime Minister. That would be the first time that any American administration has turned against an elected leader of a vigorous, pro-American democratic ally. The voters in Israel may be preparing to go it alone if necessary. It would be difficult, but it can be done.
Flunking Econ 101
The O administration has some sensible economic voices, but they don’t seem to carry much clout. Larry Summers is fairly mainstream, Robert Reich is turning radical, and Paul Krugman is a hair-pulling wild man. The so-called stimulus bill is pure political payoff to Democrat city machines, the teachers’ unions, and faithful leftwing armies like ACORN. Those 1.17 trillion dollars are not designed to stimulate normal economic activity, defined as products and services that Americans want and will work for — which is what "supply and demand" really means, after all.
The economy is one gigantic incentive machine. Take away the incentive value of work and buying things, and yes, you will get a very bad recession. And no, Nancy Pelosi has it wildly wrong by arguing that more subsidized birth control means more wealth per person, for those who are actually born. The administration is even ignoring the first-grade lessons of the Smooth-Hawley with its buy-American provisions in the House bill. Suddenly alarmist headlines are appearing in the worshipful European press. Will the US turn protectionist under Obama? Watch what the Senate does with the outlandish House bill, and we will know the answer.
Future generations are being burdened with this second trillion dollar payoff in a few months — after the first trillion bucks for TARP. But fear not. The O administration is promising yet more trillions in spending, under the mad delusion that the New Deal didn’t spend enough on things people didn’t want. The stock market is signaling fear and doubt. So far, the market looks to be right.
A Commissar style of governance
Vladimir Lenin pioneered a double-layered style of control by Soviet Party Commissars. Every government official and military officer was doubled by a Party Commissar, who wielded the real power. The result was wild swings between radicalization and stagnation in the USSR. Nobody could act without worrying about the local Commissars, who owed their real allegiances to the Kremlin. Obama is using a similar strategy by directing Samantha Power to go wherever new SecState Hillary Clinton goes.
Those two ladies hate each other, even before Power called Hillary "a monster" during the primaries. Power will report on Hillary to the White House. The Obamas are introducing a parallel staff for the major departments in the White House, to keep a jealous eye on its own appointees. The Clintons did this with the Justice Department, where Jamie Gorelick was the real power at Justice, and Janet Reno became the PR front. We know about the results in a suicidal anti-terror policy, the cynical return of the little refugee boy Elian Gonzalez to the Castro tyranny, and the Waco massacre.
A Government-Media fusion
Karl Marx told his followers "First, conquer the Organs of Propaganda." In Marx’s Germany there was no free press. Britain was one of the few examples of relative freedom in Europe, which is why Marx ended up being a foreign correspondent in London, as a ferocious public enemy of capitalism and elected governments.
Last week we found out that Rahm Emmanuel, George Stephanopoulos, James Carville and Paul Begala have been carrying on daily, hour-long conference calls for the last 17 years, even while they were hopping from one top job to another in the White House, ABC News, and various liberal political campaigns. If you think all the big media sound oddly similar, we now now why.
A lockstep alliance between government and the big media is a marker of radical Leftist rulers. Putin just had a couple of more journalists murdered in Moscow. That is not likely to happen here, but then, it wont be necessary. The big media are already PR flacks for the Left. Well, just to make that relationship of buyer and bought explicit, a Boston Globe journalist has just proposed a special Federal bailout for newsies who have utterly destroyed their own audiences. Somewhere in Hell Jozef Goebbels is smiling.
Appointing openly corrupt officials
Obama’s no-lobbyist rule is now a public joke. Confessed tax cheaters were propopsed for top positions, like Tom Daschle and Timothy Geithner. Big lobbyist power couples in Washington are being drawn in, including the Daschles. And of course we have the endless Congressional show of Democrat corruption by Charlie Rangel, Chris Dodd and far too many others.
The appointment of radical Greenies to positions like the "Science Czar" — a huge self-contradiction — are sending very bad signals to the giant Federal research establishment.
Moving against conservative media
Immediately after the election, Fox News and Washington Times reporters were thrown off the Obama campaign plane. Obama’s first television interview just took place with terror-supporting Al-Arabiya TV, an Islamist riff on CNN. A Republican FCC member has warned that a disguised censorship rule giving local leftist groups additional "community input" into radio license renewals may become law by administrative fiat.
That’s what we are seeing so far. Keep a sharp eye out in the coming weeks and months. Let’s hope the O’s will see reason somehow. But so far, the signals sent by their actions are ominous.
US Taxpayers To Fund Abortion Worldwide
In the most outrageous political move any human being could make B. Obama put his signature for all eternity to allow the United States taxpayers to fund abortion internationally. This is a stamp of evil and eternal death for a man who has sworn allegiance to countless number of sins against righteousness. {ray}
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Friday quietly ended the Bush administration’s ban on giving federal money to international groups that perform abortions or provide information on the option. Liberal groups welcomed the decision, while abortion rights foes criticized the president.
Known as the "Mexico City policy," the ban has been reinstated and then reversed by Republican and Democratic presidents since Ronald Reagan established it in 1984. Democrat Bill Clinton ended the ban in 1993, but Republican George W. Bush re-instituted it in 2001 as one of his first acts in office.
A White House spokesman, Bill Burton, said Obama signed an executive order on the ban, without coverage by the media, late Friday afternoon. That was in contrast to the midday signings with fanfare of executive orders on other subjects earlier in the week.
Obama’s action came one day after the 36th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion.
The Bush policy had banned U.S. taxpayer money, usually in the form of Agency for International Development funds, from going to international family planning groups that either offer abortions or provide information, counseling or referrals about abortion. The rule also had prohibited federal funding for groups that lobby to legalize abortion or promote it as a family planning method.
Both Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who will oversee foreign aid, had promised to do away with the rule during the presidential campaign. Clinton visited the U.S. Agency for International Development on Friday but made no mention of the step.
Obama has spent his first days in office aggressively signing executive orders reversing Bush administration policies on issues ranging from foreign policy to government operations. TV cameras were invited in for Wednesday’s announcements on ethics rules and for Thursday’s signing of orders on closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and banning torture in the questioning of terror suspects.
In a move related to the lifting of the abortion rule, Obama also is expected to restore funding to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), probably in the next budget. Both he and Clinton had pledged to reverse a Bush administration determination that assistance to the organization violated U.S. law.
The Bush administration had barred U.S. money from the fund, contending that its work in China supported a Chinese family planning policy of coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization. UNFPA has vehemently denied that it does.
Organizations that had pressed Obama to make the abortion-ban change were jubilant.
"Women’s health has been severely impacted by the cutoff of assistance. President Obama’s actions will help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies, abortions and women dying from high-risk pregnancies because they don’t have access to family planning," said Tod Preston, a spokesman for Population Action International, an advocacy group.
Anti-abortion groups criticized the move.
"President Obama not long ago told the American people that he would support policies to reduce abortions, but today he is effectively guaranteeing more abortions by funding groups that promote abortion as a method of population control," said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee.
Obama also is expected at some point to lift or ease restrictions on federal money for stem cell research, an issue that divides people along similar battle lines, but there was no word about any action on that Friday. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has expressed interest in pressing legislation on stem cells in the first 100 days of the new Congress if the new administration doesn’t act.
Some scientists want broader use of embryonic stem cells than is currently allowed, hoping for new treatments for many diseases. Obtaining stem cells from four- or five-day-old embryos kills the embryos, and many opponents see that as taking life.
Obama’s Appointments Give the Left Buyer’s Remorse
By Janice Shaw Crouse November 25, 2009
One after another, we are learning the names of the future Obama Administration. Behold, they are not new faces, nor are they the change agents that Obama’s campaign rhetoric promised. Instead, we are seeing Clinton retreads and a surprising move toward the political center. Rather than the far left team of new faces and new politics that the President-elect’s supporters dreamed about when they cast their ballots for the "change" they could believe in, we are seeing familiar faces and experienced pols. More than a few Obama fans are experiencing buyer’s remorse as they discover that "The One" seems to be abandoning them and their policies.
When confronted with the far left’s disappointment over the first appointments to be announced, one of the Transition team members responded, "An Obama White House will be focused on meeting the next challenge, not winning the next election."
Well, that response does not pass the laugh test! Or perhaps the correct translation is, "We’re so sure we’ll win the next election, we don’t even have to take that into consideration."
Clearly, Obama intends to be more than a one-term president; even before his Inauguration, he is already starting his next campaign. He is putting his chief competition, Senator Hillary Clinton, safely inside his camp and working to dispel any evidence that he is an extremist. Rather than come in and clean house, the President-elect seems to be embracing politics as usual.
The "insult" added to previous "injury" came with an announcement over the weekend that Obama’s White House will continue the political office that was held by Karl Rove in the Bush White House. During his campaign, of course, Mr. Obama vowed to keep politics out of the White House. He criticized the Bush Administration for its partisanship and accused President Bush of running a "perpetual campaign." The Obama Administration, he promised, would end what he called "politics as usual."
But he is appointing the usual - a bevy of inside-the-beltway politicians.
Thus far, there are no new faces and no one who will obviously push for new policies. Eric Holder (nominee for Attorney General) and Rahm Emanuel (Chief of Staff) bring lots of Clinton-era baggage; Tim Gaithner (Treasury Secretary) is part of New York’s big-money establishment. Tom Daschle, (HHS Secretary) is welded into the Senate’s good ‘ole boy network. Further, Obama helped to protect Joe Lieberman’s Senate committee chairmanship even though Lieberman crossed party lines to actively campaign for John McCain. The leftist Bible, The Nation, noted recently that "not a single, solitary, actual dyed-in-the-wool progressive" has even been mentioned for the Obama Cabinet.
The Far Left contends that Barack should be dancing with the ones that brought him to the White House. Those on the right who treasure our traditional America values of personal responsibility and freedom have far more serious cause for worry.
While Obama is filling top slots of his Administration with politicians from the center, his agenda will be thrust forward by the Schedule C minions in the lower levels of government who will be able to work under the radar to push his far left ideology. That is the bottom-up strategy that he learned as a community organizer and a strategy that links him with his primary season competitor, Hillary Clinton, who promoted the feminist goals of the Beijing Platform for Action through various task forces set up in the federal agencies following the U.N.’s Beijing World Conference on Women. Both of these leftist politicians have learned to speak the language of the masses while working behind the scenes on the policies of the radical true believers.
Thus, Obama’s appointments are sending a signal that his administration will be far more hawkish than his campaign rhetoric indicated. In addition to the likely appointment of Senator Clinton as Secretary of State, there are other signs that President-elect Obama is changing his stance on the war in Iraq — despite official assurances that his position on Iraq hasn’t changed and won’t change. He seems to be leaning toward retaining Robert Gates, President Bush’s Defense Secretary. Also, he is leaning toward a McCain backer, General James Jones, former NATO commander, as National Security Advisor and Janet Napolitano, governor of Arizona and a supporter of the Iraq war, for heading the Homeland Security Department. These possible appointments appear to signal a weakening of his promise to withdraw troops over the next 18 months.
The possible appointment of Mrs. Clinton to the top foreign policy position also raises questions about the U.S. position on Iran and Israel. During the campaign, Senator Clinton held to a hard line regarding Iran and Senator Obama famously talked about sitting down to negotiate "without preconditions." Senator Clinton has been a steadfast supporter of Israel (not any surprise in light of her numerous Jewish constituents in New York) and some pundits think that she would aggressively pursue a Middle East peace deal if she were Secretary of State.
Beyond questions of policy, critics are concerned that Obama is shaping a third Clinton term. The sheer drama of appointing Hillary, with the added soap-opera potential of husband Bill’s antics, is cause for apprehension to many of Obama’s supporters who fear that his agenda will be overshadowed by the Clintons’ egos.
To repeat: what Obama’s critics are overlooking is that he is a former community organizer; he prefers to work under the radar, starting from the grassroots. Those who are looking at the top layer of the Obama Administration wanting to see a sign of the "second coming of Saul Alinsky" (as one blogger put it), are going to be disappointed. Those who watched First Lady Hillary Clinton set up little fiefdoms in all the government agencies to push the policies of the Beijing Platform for Action and those who observed Senator Barack Obama utilize ACORN to build a political machine that spread from Chicago throughout the nation will recognize the strategy and tactics of master manipulators.
Even though they differ on many other fronts, Barack and Hillary are kindred spirits when it comes to using the government’s legendary "soft power" and the national "bully pulpit" to achieve their personal and political ends. So, while the nation is lulled into thinking that Barack is moving to the center, his minions who are actually carrying the water will be hard-core "progressives" moving the leftist agenda forward largely out of the public’s sight in the mid-level management positions of the government’s sprawling bureaucracy. Much of the real action will happen behind the scenes in thousands of small decisions and initiatives that will remain nearly invisible until — like the explosion in the number of mother-only families that followed from Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty — the transformation of their cumulative effects begins to emerge.
Concerned Women for America
1015 Fifteenth St. N.W., Suite 1100
Washington, D.C. 20005
Phone: (202) 488-7000
Fax: (202) 488-0806
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