Did You Know...

Yesterday, GOP Sen. Jim DeMint announced on his Senate website that he had enough votes to kill the notorious Law of the Sea Treaty:

4 additional senators have joined in opposition to LOST, including Mike Johanns (R-NE), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Rob Portman (R-OH) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA). With 34 senators against the misguided treaty, LOST will not be ratified by the Senate this year.

As I reported in May:

The fight over LOST goes back three decades, when it was first rejected by President Ronald Reagan. He warned that “no national interest of the United States could justify handing sovereign control of two-thirds of the Earth’s surface over to the Third World.” According to top Reagan officials William Clark and Ed Meese, their boss believed the “central, and abiding, defect” was “its effort to promote global government at the expense of sovereign nation states — and most especially the United States.”

The persistent transnationalists who drafted LOST favor creation of a massive United Nations bureaucracy that would draw ocean boundaries, impose environmental regulations and restrict business on the high seas. They’ve tinkered with the document obsessively since the late ’60s, enlisted Presidents Clinton and Bush, and recruited soon-to-depart GOP Sen. Dick Lugar to their crusade. Ignore the mushy save-the-planet rhetoric. Here’s the bottom line: Crucial national security decisions about our naval and drilling operations would be subject to the vote of 162 other signatories, including Cuba, China and Russia.

While our sovereignty would be redistributed around the world, most of the funding for the massive LOST regulatory body would come from — you guessed it! — the United States. Forbes columnist Larry Bell reports that “as much as 7 percent of U.S. government revenue that is collected from oil and gas companies operating off our coast” would be meted out to “poorer, landlocked countries.” This confiscatory act of environmental justice would siphon billions, if not trillions, away from Americans. International royalties would be imposed; an international tribunal would be set up to mediate disputes. There would be no opportunity for court appeals in the U.S.

So, it’s dead. For now. But power-grabbing progressives don’t give up so easily. Conservatives must maintain vigilance:

One of the most vocal and effective spokesmen against LOST has been Heritage Foundation expert Steven Groves. He testified in June before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Senator Kerry.

…Yesterday, Groves said the treaty was dead for the time being, but that opponents should remain vigilant:

By getting to 34 Senators in opposition, we have won a big battle. But Senator Kerry is unlikely to give up very easily, and the war won’t be over until it’s over.
Indeed, Kerry is already planning a counteroffensive for after the election, when his spokeswoman said Senators will be “away from the politics of the moment.”

The politics of LOST are anything but momentary—President Ronald Reagan declined to sign the treaty in 1982, and we are still fighting this creeping United Nations bureaucracy today. Reagan recognized that the best way to secure American freedom on the seas was a strong U.S. Navy, which will remain true if and when the Senate considers LOST again.

Keep up the phone calls and letters, especially to the Johnny-come-lately GOP senators on LOST:

Mike Johanns (R-NE)
404 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Tel: (202) 224-4224
Fax: (202) 228-0436
Hours: 8:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. ET

Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)
D.C. Office
144 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Phone: 202-224-3324
Fax: 202-224-4952

Rob Portman (R-OH)
338 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-3353

Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
United States Senate
131 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Tel: (202) 224-3643
Fax: (202) 228-0724