Full court press
Here was the Bush administration openly threatening Belgium because it allegedly overstepped its prerogatives by accepting international human rights litigation in its courts, only for us to now realize that much the same thing is occurring, well, in...the United States.

According to today's New York Times, American courts are accepting a considerably larger number of trials having foreign implications, including human rights trials. Said one legal scholar: "If we're going to try these people for violating a nickel-and-dime contract, why can't you sue them for genocide?"

True, the administration has been consistent, opposing such litigation both at home and abroad. The only difference is that Washington has threatened to take retaliatory action abroad, in one case telling Belgium that it would seek to move NATO headquarters to another country if such trials continued.

It could always threaten U.S. courts that if the litigation continues it will move the federal capital to...Brussels.