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Monday, Dec 3, 2012 5:22 PM UTC

Rick Santorum now a columnist at birther website World Net Daily

His first column opposes a U.N. treaty that promotes equal protection for people with disabilities

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Topics: Rick Santorum, World Net Daily, Joseph Farah, right wing, 2012 Elections,

Rick Santorum now a columnist at birther website World Net DailyRick Santorum speaks in Shawano, Wis. (Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Failed Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum landed his own column at the birther conspiracy theory website World Net Daily, and in his inaugural column expanded on his opposition to ratifying a United Nations treaty that would protect people with disabilities, because it “crushes U.S. sovereignty.”

World Net Daily announced Monday that Sanotrum will join the team as an “exclusive columnist,” after he “ignited grass-roots conservatives” during his failed bid in the Republican primary. His columns will be featured every Monday. The conservative website is most well-known  for pounding the birther drum harder (and longer) than anyone, and for occasionally dipping a toe into white nationalism.

In his first column, Santorum continues his opposition to a push by Democrats in Congress to ratify a U.N. treaty to promote equal rights for the disabled. Last week, he called it ”a direct assault on us and our family.” This week he explains his opposition to the “much darker and more troubling implications” of the treaty on WND:

The most offensive provision is found in Section 7 of the treaty dealing specifically with children with disabilities. That section reads:

“In all actions concerning children with disabilities, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.”

“The best interest of the child” standard is lifted out of a controversial provision contained in the 1989 treaty called the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. That treaty was never ratified in large part because of this provision.

“The best interest of the child” standard may sound like it protects children, but what it does is put the government, acting under U.N. authority, in the position to determine for all children with disabilities what is best for them. That is counter to the current state of the law in this country which puts parents – not the government – in that position of determining what is in their child’s best interest. Under the laws of our country, parents lose that right only if the state, through the judicial process, determines that the parents are unfit to make that decision.

Santorum concludes that “there is no reason for our country to give up our sovereignty to the United Nations when it comes to providing benefits and protections for the disabled in America.”

But as Dana Milbank of the Washington Post explained last week, Santorum’s opposition is “from the dark world of U.N. conspiracy theories” and the treaty “requires virtually nothing of the United States. It essentially directs the other signatories to update their laws so that they more closely match the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

From Milbank:

The opponents argue that the treaty, like most everything the United Nations does, undermines American sovereignty — in this case via a plot to keep Americans from home-schooling their children and making other decisions about their well-being.

The treaty does no such thing; if it had such sinister aims, it surely wouldn’t have the support of disabilities and veterans groups, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Republican senators such as John McCain (Ariz.) and John Barrasso (Wyo.), and conservative legal minds such as Boyden Gray and Dick Thornburgh.

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Jillian Rayfield is an Assistant News Editor for Salon, focusing on politics. Follow her on Twitter at @jillrayfield or email her at jrayfield@salon.com. More Jillian Rayfield.

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