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"Our Constitution," John Quincy Adams once wrote, "professedly rests upon the good sense and attachment of the people. This basis, weak as it may appear, has not yet been found to fail." Until now that is.

These are tough times for the document which governs our Republic. As it was once asked of Bill Clinton during his presidency, it could be asked today of our Constitution -- is it relevant? Unfortunately, to many of our national leaders, it is not.

Last summer, our beloved State Department found it in its purview to issue gold-plated invitations to foreign busybodies from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor our federal elections. Clearly, one of the French wannabe's at Foggy Bottom misread the Constitution, not understanding that our Founders gave to the "States" -- not the "State Department" -- the chore of conducting elections for federal office. In fairness to the State Department, they -- in their convoluted way -- were trying to protect the integrity of the elections after 13 Democrat House members -- who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution -- demanded international election monitors from Kofi Annan's United Nations.

But while the UN didn't get to oversee our elections, they may yet get to govern America's use of the seas. In January, during her confirmation hearings for Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice expressed her firm support -- and that of her boss -- for the UN's Law of the Sea Treaty. Among its many faults, is the fact that this treaty grants the United Nations the authority to levy taxes -- a power the Boys of Philadelphia reserved for the House of Representatives.

Two weeks ago, Kofi Annan's World Health Organization announced that another treaty -- the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control -- had become international law after it had been ratified by only 20 percent of the world's countries. The treaty, which the Bush administration signed last May, demands curbs on tobacco advertisements and hefty taxes on tobacco products. It seeks to expand New York City's "Bloomberg Doctrine" which states that tobacco may not be used anywhere at any time.

Then, last week, five jug-headed jurists on the Supreme Court invoked international law, European opinion and a concept they dubbed "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society," to find in the Constitution a right of immunity from the death penalty for minors.

In Roper v. Simmons, the Court's "Creative Coalition" -- Justices Kennedy, Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer -- were desperate to enact a political policy. But lacking logic and domestic precedent, they turned to the wisdom of the international community -- which, oddly enough, wasn't represented in Philadelphia in 1787.

"Our determination that the death penalty is disproportionate punishment for offenders under 18," Justice Kennedy wrote, "finds confirmation in the stark reality that the United States is the only country in the world that continues to give official sanction to the juvenile death penalty."

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