With Missouri v. Holland the SCOTUS decided that treaties had the capacity to render actions constitutional, which if taken by Congress would have been unconstitutional. Coincidentally, the issue at hand was environmental. An earlier law protecting interstate migratory birds was twice struck down on constitutional grounds (ie, the Federal gov’t had no authority over birds, having no bird-related powers vested it by the text). The inventive way around the Constitution by the environmentalist supporters was to sign an international treaty protecting migratory birds, on the pretext that the treaty, being supreme law of the land as provided by the Constitution, could overcome any constitutional limitations. Missouri argued that the Federal gov’t had no ability, by treaty, to bind states with laws which if enacted “freestanding” would have been themselves unconstitutional. SCOTUS went against Missouri.

That was step one, and established the idea that a Federal treaty can entirely invalidate and supplant existing constitutional provisions, including the Bill of Rights — in that case, the 10th amendment.

The next half of the puzzle is United State v. Belmont, which held that an “executive agreement” by the POTUS with a foreign power was binding on the states and could not be rejected even when the agreement was against state law. The issue at the time was the formal recognition of the USSR by FDR, and his accession to allow the nationalization of Russian assets held in the US (bank accounts, etc). The owners of those assets naturally objected, and NY state at least refused to comply. SCOTUS again went against the state, Justice Sutherland arguing, incomprehensibly, that this was justified under the treaty provisions of the Constitution (he even referenced Missouri v. Holland).

The problem in Belmont being that no treaty had been approved by the Senate at all, it was just the President’s “executive agreement” with the Soviet Union.

The combination of those two atrocious decisions is that [external] treaties may entirely subvert and trump all [internal] rights and constitutionality, and that to fall within the category of “treaty” all that is necessary is that the President, on his own initiative and without any ratification, make an agreement with some foreign power or group of powers.

In practice, “I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t some trouble about this,” if it were attempted by that route, but there is certainly some precedent supporting a dire view of the things.

. . . but one must take heed when the treety actually talks about an unelected, international governing body that has political and financial power over our country.

And you can bet your sweet burro people would, especially the bankers and big investors, were that the case. It’s not the case, though, is it. No, you can’t find it in the treaty, can you.

One World is a frequent flyer plan, not a political conspiracy.

the business of climate change

OT. After spending a few hundred quid on my darling daughter’s new car, I sat down in the late afternoon yesterday & watched a 70′s sci-fi thriller, I caught it mid stream where there were all these weirdy block-robed mutant humans sitting in a makeshift court room, with a poor fella manacled & shackled head & toe spreadeageld on the floor in front of the baddy leader, who was lording it over this poor fella & ranting on like a bible-bashing preacher, that he “had knowledge of the use of the wheel” & other such machines of humanity, that had allegedly caused their current predicament, for which this poor fella was unfortunately to be sentenced to death. I have to admit that I at first thought this was a live broadcast from a side-show at Copenhagen for few minutes (the shape of things to come no doubt?). Then of course it dawned me that it was only a film after all, the wonderful Omega Man (original, sorry to Will Smith) with the gr8 (blast that texting daughter of mine) Charlton Heston, with the wonderful Anthony Zerbe as the chief baddy! What a relief that was, although I dare say that’s where Greenpeace (Redwar) gets its scripts from!

How is this relevant? Aside from the fact that I don’t remember seeing any pictures that actually look like cooling towers, billowing clouds are a neat visual representation, transparent gasses don’t have the same visual impact.

The teachers are on to them with AGW alarmist stuff on a daily basis.

When they grow up, there will be hell to pay.

Its like a coming horde of green Hitler youth…..

A frikking awesome video which all should see – this one should go viral in a sane world.

namaste

Viscount Monckton and the alarmist contingent have been going at it for the last couple of years. And New Scientist has no more credibility than Nexus.

For Monckton’s response to Schmidt’s ankle biting: click

Oh, dear.

And it was the Sunday Telepgraph that is amongst the few publications to reproduce Monckton’s nonsense.

No wait, hang on, his treatise was accepted by this reputable academic journal, right next to the study of Time Travel Portals ….

Oh dear.

Ken, thanks for letting me know.

Friends of Science 2009 Radio Ads
http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=451

I flip the dial all hours of the day in Vancouver. I’ve not yet heard these ads on any of the dominant stations here.

For any future rounds of ads I would advise caution regarding mention of the “quiet sun” and “whether or not” there has been warming in the past decade.

Partial Elaboration:
It is important that the public understand that warming happens for natural reasons (& that solar-terrestrial relations are complex). It is also very important to alert the public to the alarmist tactic of conflating warming with anthropogenic warming, as if natural variation can only cause temporary cooling and is no longer capable of causing natural warming.

Aside:
The primary issue I see (i.e. the screaming weak [actually nonexistent] link) is the untenable assumption of randomness in statistical inference on solar/geophysical spatiotemporal series …but I realize (!) that isn’t necessarily a message that can be crafted to resonate with the general public under the constraints of 30 second air-wave blasts.

Cheers,
Paul.

Have you heard about our radio ad blitz in 15 Canadian cities? Hear our ads
at
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Interesting. Never heard anything about it.