SYRIA SHAMED OUT OF RUNNING FOR HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL SEAT: “A coalition of 25 human rights groups headed by the Geneva-based UN Watch cheered today’s withdrawal by Syria of its candidacy for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council.” This is good news. The problem is that it takes vast amounts of political capital to achieve something that, on any ordinary moral calculus, should not even be up for discussion.  Yet, the UN being the UN, it is.  The Human Rights Council is itself the shame, and the US does neither itself nor the cause of human rights any good by being on it.