Side note: the test I describe doesn't test any particular subject, just developmental functions. In that way it's unbiased to subject matter beyond basic skills (ie: no issues around religious or cultural teaching but one still needs to learn to read/write/do arithmetic/etc.)

I should clarify that statement a bit...

US constitution prohibits "after the fact" creation of laws and congress failed to define a special category for these individuals in law before taking them. Because they were not legally defined they would have to fall into one of the following definitions:

1) Citizen (or a subset with similar rights like landed immigrants)
2) foreign national (or a subset of that designation)
3) a combatant subject to the Geneva Convention

They couldn't allow 1 or 3 to occur due to legal implications so the only remaining classification if foreign national. the "Laws of Nations" is one of the few areas in the constitution which guarantees foreign nationals any rights. By holding a foreign national indefinitely without charge it becomes involuntary servitude. The moment they charge them they fall under one of the other categories.

Guantanamo's prisoners status in the constitution is actually quite clear:

Article 3, Section 2:

The above gives jurisdiction, regardless of whether or not it is on US soil or a US citizen.

These national laws include:

  - No attacks on foreign nations, their citizens, or shipping, without either a declaration of war or letters of marque and reprisal.
  - Honoring of the flag of truce, peace treaties, and boundary treaties. No entry across national borders without permission of national authorities.
  - Care and decent treatment of prisoners of war.

Most importantly it includes:
  - Prohibition of enslavement of foreign nationals and international trading in slaves.

This gives specific provisions for the rights of non-US citizens. Said citizenship (or rather lack there of) was the basis for denying Guantanamo prisoners due process under the previous challenge. A challenge under the "laws of nations" would imbue at least a small section of rights to those individuals.

US 13th Amendment:

note the bolded part as it relates to the above bolded part.

Per United States v. Kozminski, 487 U.S. 931 (1988):

Since they refuse to charge them with a crime they cannot claim the exemption in slavery laws - if they do charge them with a crime they are subject to the rights under US law which they don't want either.

It doesn't require an international enforcement mechanism. The enforcement is to come from within, with consideration by the local courts/legislatures of its interpretation and application. Sovereignty isn't ignored just because an international treaty is signed. It would be prohibitively complex and expensive to get everyone to comply 100% right away. A report/observations are made and the most egregious violations get the focus. Right now it's focused on Saudi Arabia's law where a child can be convicted as an adult and killed (they wait until they're 18 before killing them though) as well as some of Iran's laws - political pressure has already got Iran to recognize the Age of Majority in its law which was huge. Now it's just the most serious crimes which are still allowing capitol punishment of children.

Funnily enough, that's one of the US's objections to ratifying - they want to continue to kill minors for certain crimes.

It has been interpreted by that country's laws in certain ways, absolutely. It is not what it's made out to be though. Most of the rhetoric stems from ParentalRights.org and in particular this: http://www.parentalrights.org/...{550447B1-E2C1-4B55-87F1-610A9E601E45}

If you read through their citations though you'll notice they start off by mentioning the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties - the US has not ratified that treaty. Then they go on to quote the constitution...

This is particularly interesting because the US has already ratified "International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights". In doing so they declared that Articles 1-27 were not self-executing. This meant that congress had no obligation to implement the provisions in law. However, they did not make the exception of the remaining articles meaning they are self-executing (Medellin v. Texas).

This means that the Supreme Court as well as State legislatures are obliged to adhere to all the articles. This is further backed up by their statement of understanding:

So what does that mean? Likely a court challenge to get the supreme court to apply something like the "Baker" principle (there is precedent for it):

Once that is done articles 1-27 come into effect in practice:

There's the protection against the craziness that is spouted by ParentalRights.org - and even if that should not exist, the law is quite clear that the US constitution trumps any international agreement so anything that is currently protected under the constitution will remain so after ratification. So many of these organizations don't understand that international law is not like domestic law - it's viewed as a whole, not part by part.

Many point to things like the German SWAT team that stormed a family's house because they were being home schooled and blaming that on the CRC... in reality it was actually a German domestic law that made home schooling illegal.

I will admit that there are some laws which may change the parental rights in the US, but only so far as they are constitutional. I suspect corporal punishment would be one of them. That said, Canada ratified the treaty a couple decades ago and still has a corporal punishment law on the books for parents. They also allow it in the military.

The "test" isn't required, merely that the state is ensuring the child is getting what it considers to be a proper primary education (not even secondary - just primary, secondary education they actually encourage alternate forms)

How they determine that can take many forms, standardized tests, interviews, or the preferred method in my mind would be something akin to the "psycho-educational assessment" done to identify disabilities. It's not a test to memorize and grade - it compares you on individual functions and criteria as compared to everyone else who's taken that particular test. Prior knowledge might boost the odd score but there'd be no incentive to do so since it's not graded in the formal sense. If anything it would be a useful tool for parents who are homeschooling to identify areas of weakness that they may want to focus on or even strengths that they might use to focus their child's education on some potential careers which use a particular function.

So yes, it would "affect" parents in that they might have to do some paperwork but would protect kids from falling through the cracks and receiving inadequate/no primary education.

There's a lot of noise around the subject but 99% of it is misunderstanding of law.

Regarding "closed adoptions" the CRC avoids using any language which attributes a biological connection between parent and child. They always use terms related to the "family" or to the legal status of the child. A child given up for adoption ceases the "familial" bond with the biological parent and the state then must look out for the best interests when placing the child with a new family or caring for it. This language allows for voluntary cessation of that relationship while protecting involuntary cessation.

Home schooling is similarly unaffected. Article 28, which people believe affects their ability to home school, simply don't understand that "home school" is a valid "school" under Article 28 so long as it is meet's the state's own educational standards. Meaning the state needs to monitor the child's educational development (usually done by a test once or twice a year) to make sure they are getting an education, but they do not have to force anyone into a particular institution.

There are similar concerns about the language of "child rights" vs "parental rights" thinking that the child's rights can somehow overrule the parent in things like searching a child's room, disciplinary actions, familial/cultural rules, etc. but these are absurd in a legal interpretation. The CRC goes out of its way to respect "applicable law" of the state. It leaves interpretation of "best interests", "appropriate", etc up to the individual states because no two will be identical and much of it is situational or subject to change over time. These definitions would normally be interpreted by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties which may put some limitations on the state definitions but of course the US hasn't ratified that treaty either.

Either way, no international treaty can supersede the constitution (Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957)) and the CRC only allows for "advisory" judgements by the ICJ so no one could actually force the US to do anything (including applying sanctions). It's all just fear mongering to justify political positions.

If I have I wouldn't recognize it as you - I don't look at the usernames, just the comments.

No, it just means that your country has more in common with countries like Iran or Soviet era Russia than you'd like to admit.

Did you know that the US is one of only 3 countries that haven't ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child? The other two are Somalia and South Sudan.

http://www.discovery.com/tv-sh... - around the 5 minute mark. That's evil.

Pretty much.

Here's the actual link to the apology instead of a random blog. http://corporate.comcast.com/c...

Very much so, our offices are up to 3x23" screens for the top 1/3rd. My home computer I setup with a dropzone program with a 3x2x3 window setup on a 30" screen with a 19" side screen... back in 2006. Only time I go back to a single screen/window is on a laptop and even then I'll run a 2/3rd by 1/3rd windowed setup for gaming etc.

Fixed

1997 and I so want a Global Communicator.

Slide-ins on websites have been around a LOT longer than Metro. I did one based on Fallout's pipboy interface back in the 90s, does that mean I influenced Microsoft? They come and go though are generally abandoned after a time because users didn't know they were there, they interfered with navigation, and/or they just plain annoyed users. As to the Toronto Sun, it's a fucking tabloid their bread and butter is sensationalist in-your-face over-the-top garbage.

When I see the Toronto Sun's interface I think of this: http://b2b.cbsimg.net/blogs/th...

Yet the reason Microsoft became the dominant OS was because of business uses. Businesses do not want systems built for media consumption. They want productivity. More and more offices are going to multiple screen systems or "ultra wide" screens because they're finding productivity gains for having multiple windows visible at once instead of switching between apps.

That's the definition of a bad interface when you have to go to an alternate interface (keyboard) to get it to do what you want.

I could have cared less about the start menu if I could disable the start screen. I'd long since abandoned the start menu in favour of Launchy

Exactly right. Full screen was a bad idea period, changing the bounding on windows so the flow below the start menu when maximized, and those effing trigger zones drive me nuts. I don't know how many times I've gone for desktop peek or to minimize all and been prevented by the Charms bar - it's gotten a little better with the latest update, now it shows up but doesn't prevent you from clicking unless you move up/down but that still causes issues on occasion.