Because really, what purpose could an Iranian human rights agency serve? Oh, right, yeah. Well, what purpose could it serve besides watching out for those pesky killings in the streets, political oppression, executions for homosexuality, and beating of women for not dressing in compliance with the Koran? Besides that.

So far this year the Iranian regime has beaten women on video for dressing improperly; rigged an election to suit the hard-liners; oppressed political dissent in a brutal crack down; fired on and killed protesters in the street; hunted down those who tried to get word out through the internet; and worse. How does President Obama respond? By refusing to fund an Iranian human rights watch agency.

“If there is one time that I expected to get funding, this was it,’’ said Rene Redman, the group’s executive director, who had asked for $2.7 million in funding for the next two years. “I was sur prised, because the world was watching human rights violations right there on television.’’

Many see the sudden, unexplained cutoff of funding as a shift by the Obama administration away from high-profile democracy promotion in Iran, which had become a signature issue for President Bush. But the timing has alarmed some on Capitol Hill.

“The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center is at the forefront of pioneering and vitally important work,’’ said Senator Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, in a statement yesterday. “It is disturbing that the State Department would cut off funding at precisely the moment when these brave investigations are needed most.’’

Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington-based think tank, said, “It is a shock that they did not get funding.’’ A reason, he asserted, may be that “the Obama administration is so focused on engaging Iran that they don’t want this information to get in the way.’’

I can see libertarians, especially isolationists, making an argument about what the government should or shouldn’t be doing in regards to Iran. But Obama is no libertarian on any other issue. The government can fund socialized health care but he finds a human rights watch agency out of bounds? I don’t think so.

The Obama Administration made the decision to kill funding for the agency because its existence likely would’ve pissed off the Mullahs in Iran, who Barack Obama is trying to sit down for talks with. Just like his refusal to meet with the Dalai Lama before a trip to China, Obama is making decisions on human rights and freedoms based on what our enemies are okay with. He’ll ignore basic human rights in order to sit down for unconditional talks with terrorists and rogue regimes.

Yet this is the same Barack Obama who lectured the Bush Administration for selectively supporting democracy where America’s strategic interests were concerned. This is the same Obama who opposes the use of enhanced interrogation techniques that could save lives because he finds the techniques morally wrong. He wants everyone else to be a moral absolutist, but he becomes very selective in promoting human rights and freedom when he actually comes into power.

I look forward to liberal apologists suddenly making libertarian arguments about what the constitution permits funding. It’ll be fun.

Update: Wait! Even better. From the comments over at the original article:

Who cares, you can feed a lot of people in this country with that money by keeping the unemployment checks going instead of compling records and not doing anything with them. Is anyone living any better in Iran, as a result of their work,the answer is No.

Cut all these programs, we need to fund a single payer health care program.

We can’t fund human rights watch agencies because we need to the money to fund socialized health care to an extent even Obama publicly opposes. Fantastic.

A right-wing neocon propaganda mill on the arm of the US taxpayer. Good riddance.

Yes, those notorious right-wing neocons at the Obama Administration’s State Department. Yummy.