Puzzling pause on ocean claims

An amazingly contradictory attitude about offshore drilling is coming from Senate Republicans: They pushed unsuccessfully for a bill to expedite drilling permits, but they keep resisting an international treaty that would expand the area of the seabed (and its resources) that we could control, like a huge chunk off Alaska.

The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea sets up rules for recognizing the rights of nations to areas of the ocean. Those who have joined, like Russia, can make claims under the treaty to the seabed beyond their existing 200-mile economic zone -- and they're doing it. Still, despite support for the treaty from people as different as former President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, our nation sits on the sidelines, while the rest of the world carves up the ocean.

It's time for the Senate to join the world.