A new right, courtesy of Bush?

It’s comforting to know that not every member of the Bush Administration is plotting to take our rights. In fact, some are even hopeful that Bush will create new rights. For example, Philip Mangano, Bush’s point person on homelessness, is hopeful that Bush’s increased spending on housing programs “will lead us to establish the right to housing. That would be consistent with our history of righting wrongs in this country, like slavery, and then creating rights afterward.”

If the right to housing is not “created” by Bush, then perhaps an enterprising judge can create this right, since the UN Declaration of Human Rights says housing is a right and reshaping American law so it conforms to international definitions of “human rights” is all the rage among our robed masters.

But it is Katherine Harris who is truly on the cutting edge of rights theory. Mrs. Harris not only wants to create a right to housing, but a right to a clean residence.

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9:48 pm on February 5, 2004