Human rights.

The new Florida Bar President Frank Angones understandably wants to get off on the right foot with his constituency. Alas, to do so, he takes what certainly must be considered a Peter Pan view of the organization in his inaugural president's page about "The Defense of Human Rights." He proclaims "The Florida Bar and its members are at the forefront of human rights."

In Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), the Bar and its members were viewed in a less favorable light. Justice John Paul Stevens in a dissent concluded after the fiasco of voting errors in Florida in the 2000 election that some Bar advocates showed "an unstated lack of confidence in the impartiality and capacity of the state judges who would make the critical decisions if the vote count were to proceed.... Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."

So Florida and its lawyers may not shine so brightly at the U.S. Supreme Court, but as Mr. Angones acknowledges, human rights issues go beyond state and national boundaries. Yet nowhere in his article does he mention the International Declaration of Human Rights.

However, in focusing on human rights in the context of this nation, Mr. Angones makes clear that his vision is limited to rights set forth in the International Covenant of Political and Civil Rights. His version apparently excludes universal rights not recognized in the United States, including, e.g., the right to basic education or health care.

Those are set out in the International Covenant of Economic and Social Rights. They generally are aspirations for nations outside of the United States' sphere of influence. How such domestic lack of interest in those rights in Florida, in the U.S., affects our own nation may be seen in Michael Moore's 2007 documentary, Sicko. Uninsured and under insured U.S. citizens go abroad, to Cuba, and elsewhere plead for health care they are denied here.

Could they get the relief they need by relying on our courts? The new Bar president claims that at the heart of human rights, at least in America, is a "sense of fairness" operating in "an independent, fair, impartial, diverse, and inclusive judicial system." Such a system indeed may exist--perhaps not in Florida, but in Peter Pan's Never-never Land. There perhaps black Haitians do get the treatment that only Cubans are given if they land on our soil from abroad.

There perhaps attorneys like me who blow the whistle on corrupt or deaf judges and unethical or blind courts can get evidentiary hearings, or at least oral argument so that the public through media might learn what really goes on in places like Orlando and Gainesville. Meanwhile, I will have to be content with a smile, as I shake my head and wonder how much worse off the state would be if The Florida Bar were not at the forefront of human rights.

GABE KAIMOWITZ, Gainesville

I am amazed and disappointed that incoming Bar President Francisco Angones could write his first President's Page about "The Defense of Human Rights" without any reference whatsoever to the appalling human rights violations currently being committed in the name of the United States by the Bush administration. How can Mr. Angones devote a column to the subject of human rights and ignore the systematic torture of detainees held without the benefit of due process in prisons operated by the United States government?

The fundamental human right of habeas corpus has been stripped from so-called "enemy combatants," including U.S. citizens. Detainees are systematically tortured as a matter of policy in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and in many other Department of Defense prisons, and these same detainees are held for years without access to our system of justice. People are being "disappeared" by the United States of America: Our government kidnaps nationals of other countries and "renders" them for torture at the hands of brutal regimes. Warrantless wiretapping by U.S. government agencies tramples on the constitutional rights of Americans. The Department of Justices fires U.S. attorneys at the direction of the White House for failing to file politically motivated cases intended to affect election results and suppress the voting rights of minorities. President Bush refuses to respond to Congressional subpoenas and he overrides duly enacted laws with unlawful "signing statements." Our Attorney General finds the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war "quaint."

Yet, President Angones turns a blind eye to these blatant and outrageous violations of human rights, the U.S. Constitution, and international law, even while he states, with apparent self-satisfaction, that "The Florida Bar and its members are at the forefront in the defense of human rights." Indeed, The Florida Bar and its members should be taking a leading role in protesting and seeking to correct these flagrant abuses of human rights by our own country, but if the Bar has taken a position on these issues, I am not aware of it.

President Angones writes that his "human rights agenda for the next year will be extensive." I hope that agenda will include vigorous efforts by The Florida Bar to return our country to respect for the fundamental human rights currently being trampled by our national government. If The Florida Bar chooses to do nothing to try to remedy these abuses, its president should at least refrain from any more complacent musings on the subject of human rights.

R. ANDREW ROCK, Tampa