Human rights folly

Skeptics of the United Nations have long warned that subsidizing an outfit that holds any Third World potentate preening on an upturned bucket stands as a moral equal to the president of the United States could lead to trouble.

Supporters scoffed at the notion that -- humored long enough -- dashiki-clad kleptrocrats from nations where opponents routinely "disappear" could eventually sit in judgment of U.S. jurisprudence and "civil rights."

But here was Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, grovelling before the "United Nations Human Rights Council" on Friday, saying, "We acknowledge imperfection. Though we are proud of our achievements, we are not satisfied with the status quo."

Mr. Posner made the remarks at the start of a three-hour public humiliation (billed as a "debate") on America's human-rights record, the first time the government has subjected itself to the Council's scrutiny.

Friday, countries including Iran, Russia, China and Egypt made public relations hay by pressing the United States to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison and to ratify international "human-rights" conventions which include government censorship of "hate speech."

State Department legal adviser Harold Koh whined that the United States is working hard to close Guantanamo. Through "diligent efforts," the number of detainees has dropped to 174 from 242 when Obama took office, he simpered.

Delegates from European nations, as well as Turkey, famed for its Armenian genocide, pressed the United States to abolish the death penalty.

The Swiss and Belgian ambassadors called for the United States to scrap life sentences without the possibility of parole for criminals who were minors when they bludgeoned innocent children or storekeepers to death.

What on earth is this sovereign nation -- the one to which oppressed people have looked for centuries as a shining beacon of freedom -- doing down on bended knee asking for approval of its policies by such dungeon-ridden hellholes as Venezuela, Uganda, Cuba, Red China, Libya and Mauritania?

Hillel Neuer, executive director of Geneva-based U.N. Watch, pointed out Cuba was allowed to "hijack the session for political propaganda and to drum up anti-American sentiment worldwide" by "stacking" the speakers list with critics of Washington.

Cuba ... which still lets people rot in jail for decades for writing anti-Communist poetry.