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The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has been defeated in the U.S. Senate, thanks to the work of Glenn Beck, Rick Santorum, and other ignorant conservatives like Michelle Malkin. The Senate just voted to defeat the U.S. signing of the treaty, 61 to 38. Just six more votes were needed to pass the bill that would have allowed the President to sign the treaty, which works to protect people around the world with disabilities, ensuring them the same civil rights Americans with disabilities currently are afforded.

READ: Glenn Beck And Rick Santorum: ‘Fascistic’ UN Disabilities Treaty Is From ‘Nazi Days’

Conservatives falsely claimed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities would interfere with U.S. sovereignty and would “promote abortion,” a ludicrous claim on its face.

UPDATE from Maddow at bottom.

Some responses from Twitter tell the story:

[View the story “U.S. Senate Bows To Ideologues On Disabilities Treaty” on Storify]

U.S. Senate Bows To Ideologues On Disabilities Treaty

Senate fails to ratify UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Storified by David Badash · Tue, Dec 04 2012 09:48:27

Update Via Maddow Blog:

The U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, for those who’ve forgotten, is a human rights treaty negotiated by the George H.W. Bush administration, which has been ratified by 126 nations, including China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.

But most Senate Republicans saw it as a threat to American “sovereignty,” even though the treaty wouldn’t have required the United States to change its laws. When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the treaty with bipartisan support in July, Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) explained the proposal simply “raises the [international] standard to our level without requiring us to go further.”

In other words, we wouldn’t actually have to do anything except say we like the treaty — and then wait for other signatories around the world to catch up to the United States’ Americans with Disabilities Act.

The treaty was endorsed by Dole, John McCain, and Dick Lugar, among other prominent Republican figures, but it didn’t matter. The GOP’s right-wing base, led in part by Rick Santorum, raised hysterical fears about the treaty, and most Senate Republicans took their cues from the party’s activists, not the party’s elder statesmen.