Even so, despite this brief moment of lucidity, the city fathers left intact local laws that declared La Verkin a U.N.-free zone, and banned the U.N. from taxing the city or stationing U.N. troops there. They categorically forbade the flying of the U.N. flag from the City Hall flagstaff. The Associated Press quotes Eliot Hill, clearly one of the few voices of sanity among the 3,300 La Verkin residents, as saying, "All this does is make us look like a bunch of kooks."

Which is pretty much the same effect the Bush administration is having on the rest of the world. Although it continues to bomb Iraq to enforce admittance of chemical and biological warfare inspectors, the U.S. told its shocked allies this week that it would have no truck with a new inspection regime designed to enforce the 1972 convention banning biological weapons. The U.S. had signed the treaty under President Nixon, and the signatories have tried to work out how to enforce it ever since, but now Bush renders it totally ineffective.

This is just the latest example of toxic diplomacy. In Bonn, Germany, last week, the U.S. stood alone while the rest of the world, including even opportunistic Tokyo, signed up for enforcement of the Kyoto Protocol on emissions. As Bush's home state of Texas recovered from the recent massive floods that are a symptom of global warming, one would have expected a little more constructive engagement. But no, as with the biological weapons inspection battle, the administration contented itself with rejecting painstakingly negotiated agreements on which the U.S. had a major input, but had not made a single counterproposal.

But there is consistency here: The U.S. has not so far signed or ratified the International Convention on the Law of the Sea or the International Land Mines Treaty, either. Meanwhile, it has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, as well as U.N. protocols against child soldiers and child pornography.

Other embarrassments have gotten less attention. Two weeks ago, the Bush administration sent John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs, to represent it at the U.N. Conference on Small Arms. Bolton ensured that the agreement emerging from the conference allowed governments to ship arms to freedom fighters. In fact, he seemed to be trying to make the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution -- the right to bear arms -- into a global principle.

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