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With the nomination of Harold Hongju Koh, the Dean of Yale Law School, as the Legal Adviser for the State Department, President Barack Obama is putting a world government team in place under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The other key appointment was Anne-Marie Slaughter, the dean of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, as Director of Policy Planning at State. Slaughter wrote the 2004 book, A New World Order, and believes in an international system dominated by the U.N. and other global institutions and networks.

Some conservatives in the media have been pointing out that Koh has extremely radical views that seem to subordinate U.S. laws and the U.S. Constitution to so-called international law. Some say he even would allow the application of Islamic Shariah law in the U.S. But the conservative media focus on Koh's controversial and disputed comments about Shariah miss the point.

Based on his public statements, one has to conclude that Koh believes in a world government financed by global taxes. This is the huge issue that the media should bring to the fore. America's future as a sovereign nation is at stake.

Koh's acknowledged mentor was Harvard Law Professor and international lawyer Louis B. Sohn, who was not only a key author of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), now waiting for Senate ratification, but offered a detailed proposal to transform the United Nations into a world government in his book, World Peace Through World Law.

The fancy academic titles and affiliations sound impressive. But even a casual reading of Sohn's views would conclude that he was a dangerous crackpot.

Sohn said that he wanted this world government to maintain hundreds of thousands of troops, military bases, and be armed with nuclear weapons. The purpose, he said, would be to disarm "each and every nation and to deter or suppress any attempted international violence." This "world authority" would also require a "United Nations Revenue System," drawing taxes from "each nation" of the world, he said.

The term "world government" is too benign for what Sohn proposed. The term "global dictatorship" would be more appropriate. But this is the direction that Koh apparently would take us.

Koh, who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in the Clinton Administration, referred to Sohn during an October 24, 2006, George Washington University Law School tribute as "my grandfather in the law" because Koh, his sister, and his father had all studied under "his watchful eye."

In an essay based on his remarks, Koh explained that "In a dazzling range of areas―including arms control, the law of the sea, the law of state responsibility, the law of international organizations, international environmental law, and international dispute resolution―Louis helped draft global 'constitutions' that sought both to allocate institutional responsibilities and to declare workable rules of international law."

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