UN Human Rights Council

Today in the NYT an article about how the US is bowing out of running for inclusion in the new US Human Rights Council preferring instead to "run for a seat next year". The masterful John Bolton opines that "our leverage in terms of the new council is greater by the US not running ..". This, as opposed to the fact that we might not be elected to the Council given our appalling human rights record. Christ, we even voted (along with political heavyweights Palau and the Marshall Islands) not to establish the new council. It probably would have been better to just keep the former Human Rights Commission - perhaps HRC members Sudan and Zimbabwe could teach the US a thing or two about human rights.