Burns & Feltman decline to testify on Bahrain ...

WASHINGTON — "Human rights activists at a congressional hearing Friday implored the Obama administration to publicly and forcefully denounce Bahrain's violent and abusive crackdown against anti-government protesters. The only problem was nobody from the administration attended the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission hearing to listen to the pleas. Two top State Department officials — Political Affairs Undersecretary William Burns and Jeffrey Feltman, an assistant secretary in State's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs — were invited to testify, but didn't show up. "I was expecting at least one, possibly two witnesses from the State Department to testify," said Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., the bipartisan commission's s co-chair. "Regrettably, over the past 72 hours, we were informed that no one in any of the bureaus is available today."