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Republican Senators on Tuesday voted to block a United Nations treaty that would have helped to protect disabled Americans -- including veterans -- while they are in foreign countries.

Thirty-eight Republicans voted no, giving them five votes more than necessary to defeat the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities treaty, 61 to 38.

At an event with former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) late last month, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) announced that 36 Republicans had signed a letter pledging to vote against the treaty.

Lee told Senators on Tuesday that the treaty "threatens the right of parents to raise their children with the constant looming threat of state interference."

"We all want to support the best interest of the the child, every child," Lee said in a speech on the Senate floor. "But I and many of my constituents, including those who home school their children or send their children to private or religious schools, have justifiable doubts that a foreign U.N. body, a committee operating out of Geneva, Switzerland should decide what is in the best interest of the child at home with his or her parents in Utah or in any other state in our great union."

Writing for World Net Daily on Monday, Santorum said the treaty had "darker and more troubling implications" and suggested that it would have meant the forced abortion his daughter because she has a rare genetic disorder.

“In the case of our 4-year-old daughter, Bella, who has Trisomy 18, a condition that the medical literature says is ‘incompatible with life,’ would her ‘best interest’ be that she be allowed to die?” he asked. “Some would undoubtedly say so.”

Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly also warned in November that proponents were "using this treaty as an opportunity to promote their abortion agenda."

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who suffered disabilities while fighting in Vietnam, insisted that that the treaty would have no effect on abortion laws in the United States.

"With respect to abortion, this is a disabilities treaty and has nothing to do with abortion," McCain told his Republican colleagues in a Monday speech on the Senate floor. “Trying to turn this into an abortion debate is bad politics and just wrong.”

President George W. Bush's administration completed negotiations of the treaty in 2006 and it was signed by President Barack Obama in 2009. It had been supported by veterans groups, the disabilities community and the business community.

A Yale University Study released earlier this year found that the majority of homeless veterans suffered from PTSD or other mood disorders.

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As I've already written about here in my post on Neil Cavuto bringing in a speed reader to attack government regulations, as Media Matters pointed out, Fox News began a week long assault on government regulations in conjunction with the GOP's push to roll those regulations back as well. During their weekly address, Rep. Peter Roskam continued that assault.

Some of the businesses he named off have already been written about at C&L, such as the Gibson guitar case, and the GOP's attempt to gut the NLRB and their union busting in the Boeing case. Roskam also mentioned a business called Chicago White Metal Casting, which is "a third-generation family-owned die casting company employing 250 workers in suburban Chicago", that apparently isn't too happy about the amount of paperwork they're having to do in order to comply with the Clean Air Act and mercury emissions standards.

Fox did some follow up on the numbers being pushed over at Fox "News" on the costs of regulations which I'm sure were fed to them straight from the GOP here -- Fox's Attack On Regulations Relies On Widely Discredited Cost Estimate:

As part of a weeklong series helping to push an anti-regulatory agenda, Fox News is citing a discredited estimate that regulations cost businesses on average $161,000 each year. The estimate, which comes from a report prepared by outside researchers for the Small Business Administration, has been criticized for using a flawed research design, cherry-picking the highest cost estimates, and relying on "crude" data.

Lots more there and I don't want to just copy and paste all of their research here, so just go read the rest. And they also followed with another post this weekend which took a closer look at just what government programs, laws and regulations Fox, and by default the GOP were carping about as "burdensome" to small business owners.

Fox's War On Regulations Takes On Child Labor, Workplace Safety, Civil Rights Laws:

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Ed Schultz talked to Tax.com's David Cay Johnston and The United Steelworkers Leo Gerard about just how devastating Paul Ryan and the Republicans new budget proposal would be to the disabled, the elderly and children. Remember when everyone on the right and much of our beltway media was criticizing Alan Grayson for saying the Republicans' health care plan was not to get sick, and if you do get sick, "die quickly?" I think Paul Ryan just proved him right this week.

As David Cay Johnston pointed out during this segment, that's exactly what Ryan's budget proposals will do; assure that more people die because they can't afford to get the treatment they need as his vouchers become increasingly worthless as the cost of care continues to go up and gets pushed back onto the consumer.

And as Leo Gerard made clear, Ryan's claims that giving huge tax cuts to the rich will create jobs is a farce. As he noted, if that were true, we'd have been at full employment while Bush was in office.

Johnston also expressed his frustration with a lack of a plan to get our budget under control that doesn't balance it on the backs of the working class from the Democrats and I couldn't agree with him more. Since any talk of raising taxes seems to be taboo among our political class, I don't know what it's going to take to finally see that happen.

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As Josh Marshall at TPM noted:

They used to say that folks evolved once they got on the Supreme Court. But I'm not sure we've ever seen the kind of evolution Rand Paul's undergone over less than 24 hours.

Let me try to summarize.

1) I don't support the Civil Rights Act but I personally abhor discrimination.

2) I would not support any effort to repeal the Civil Rights Act.

3) I believe in the Civil Rights Act and the constitutional power to enforce it.

4) If I would have been in the Senate at the time I would have voted for the Civil Rights Act.

Any guesses on number 5?

Probably his remarks here to Blitzer that he still isn't so sure about how he would have voted on the Americans With Disabilities Act. And as Jed pointed out over at KOS, apparently Paul doesn't even know what's in the law he objects to:

Rand Paul, explaining to Wolf Blitzer why he objects to the Americans with Disabilities Act:

Let's say you have a local office and you have a two story office and one of your workers is handicapped. Should you not be allowed maybe to offer them an office on the first floor, or should you be forced to put in a hundred thousand dollar elevator?

Sounds reasonable, right? In fact, it's so reasonable that the ADA contains an exception for that very situation.

Elevators are not required in:

(a) private facilities that are less than three stories or that have less than 3000 square feet per story unless the building is a shopping center, a shopping mall, or the professional office of a health care provider, or another type of facility as determined by the Attorney General; or

(b) public facilities that are less than three stories and that are not open to the general public if the story above or below the accessible ground floor houses no more than five persons and is less than 500 square feet. Examples may include, but are not limited to, drawbridge towers and boat traffic towers, lock and dam control stations, and train dispatching towers.

So Rand Paul opposes a law because he believes it imposes a mandate that it does not in fact impose. What an idiot.

No argument there. Rand Paul looked like he was sucking on a lemon during this interview, so I assume he wasn't too happy to be there. He'd better get used to it since this campaign is just getting started.

And as Dave Weigel pointed out, he doesn't like the Fair Housing Act so much either: Rand Paul in '02: I may not like it, but 'a free society' will allow 'hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin':

Here's another wrinkle in the controversy over U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul's arguments, made Wednesday to NPR and Rachel Maddow, over whether the Civil Rights Act was necessary to prevent discrimination.

In a May 30, 2002, letter to the Bowling Green Daily News, Paul's hometown newspaper, he criticized the paper for endorsing the Fair Housing Act, and explained that "a free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin."

Nice work Kentucky Republicans.

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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