http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/12/04/15675104-senate-gop-kills-disabilities-treaty

A great political party has been hijacked by a cabal of lunatics.

The latest example occurred the other day on the floor of the U.S. Senate, the place once known as the “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.” It now should be called as the “World’s Greatest Loony Bin.”

Senate Republicans blocked enactment of a United Nations treaty designed to guarantee human rights for people with disabilities. Thirty-eight GOP senators voted “no” on the treaty, apparently believing that the U.N. was seeking to usurp American sovereignty. This is all part of the tea party wing of the GOP’s pitch to those with an irrational fear of the United Nations.

The convention wouldn’t require a change in U.S. law. It merely allows the United States to say that it thinks the U.N. convention is a good idea.

The Senate vote featured a rare appearance by a true American hero, Bob Dole, the former Republican senator from Kansas, who sat in a wheelchair on the Senate floor to make the case in favor of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. Dole was injured grievously during World War II, recovered and went on to serve with great honor and distinction in the Senate. He was the GOP’s presidential nominee in 1996. He, along with Sens. John McCain and Dick Lugar support the convention, as well as Senate Democrats and eight “renegade” Republicans who joined in voting in favor of the convention.

But 38 hard-core fear-mongers – all Republicans – held firm and denied the convention the two-thirds supermajority it needed to pass.

And for the record, Texas’ two GOP senators, John Cornyn and lame-duck Kay Bailey Hutchison, voted “nay” on the measure. Shame on both of them.