Jackson Diehl-The Washington Post

19 May 2010

Did the State Department get caught apologizing to China for Arizona’s new immigration enforcement law, as various Republican congressman and right-wing bloggers have been proclaiming?

The short answer is: no. But it’s safe to say the Obama administration has given human rights advocates another reason to feel uneasy about its attitude toward abuses by the world’s worst violators, such as Beijing — and the difference between dictatorships and democracies.

The tempest began with a briefing given by Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner about last week’s “human rights dialogue” between the United States and China. Posner explained that the administration’s view of the talks was that “you have an open discussion where you not only raise the other guy’s problems, but you raise your own,” adding, “we did plenty of that.”

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/05/arizonas_immigration_law_–_an.html