My dear old congressman in the Massachusett’s Ninth, Stephen F. Lynch, is one of 21 co-sponsors for a non-binding House resolution praising the Boston Red Sox on a successful 2007 season. It’s all pretty bland, and hopefully the New York delegation will vote against it so we can have a faux-controversy and possibly bloodshed.Anyways, it brought to mind another ridiculously worded non-binding resolution: the Armenian Genocide resolution.I have many issues with the Armenian resolution. For one…why is this even being discussed by a governing body? I don’t think lobbying groups (in this case Armenian–Americans) should be empowered to legislate history. There’s a similar resolution condemning the US Government for the Trail of Tears–introduced by none other than Sam Brownback!–that has sat dormant for three years now. The historical circumstances are very similar–if anything the case agains the US is much clearer–but Congress only elected to vote on the one with the multi-million dollar lobbying effort.But more importantly, why knowingly damage this nation’s relationship with a vital ally for the historical equivelant of this. The Armenian Genocide is a serious and hotly debated historical issue. No less an authority than Bernard Lewis disputes its particulars–why should the words of a few US Congressman be held in equal weight?Non-binding resolutions are for the most part a joke; any attempt to use them to answer academic questions is nothing less than an abuse of power.