My last post questioned why the U.S.-China "hotline" was such a big deal in this day and age. This perhaps sheds some light on why any accomplishment of the government should be applauded, given all the important stuff they have to do these days:

The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution Wednesday calling on China to end its crackdown on Tibet and release Tibetans imprisoned for "nonviolent" demonstrations.

This is what the U.S. government is spending its time doing these days. Nice. Apparently everything else in the country is going along swimmingly, so a non-binding resolution on something like this is not a time waster or anything.

For U.S. politics junkies – Ron Paul was the only one who voted against this. He is a libertarian and most likely felt that this issue was none of our (U.S.) business. I'm not sure that I would go that far, but these non-binding resolutions are embarrassing PR stunts and nothing else. You get a nice warm feeling and nothing to show for it.

And here is the inevitable response from the Chinese government here, as reported in the FT. What an incredible waste of time.