As a matter of hospitality, the United States warmly welcomes the heads of state of friendly foreign nations. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for instance, properly received respectful treatment on her recent trip to Washington.

But there was something unseemly in Chancellor Merkel's lecturing a joint session of the U.S. Congress on specific actions she believes it should take to fight global warming.

Her speech took on the air of a State of the Union address, with liberal supporters cheering and conservative opponents remaining silent. She insisted that "we need the readiness of all nations to assume internationally binding obligations" on emissions of greenhouse gases.

She also offered assurances that heavily polluting nations such as India and Communist China would jump on the bandwagon of limiting emissions if the United States and Europe do so first.

That may or may not be true. But proposed climate change legislation in the United States would cripple our economy and destroy jobs by slapping huge surcharges on manufacturers that have what environmentalists consider "too-high" greenhouse gas emissions.

Germany, India and Communist China are free to take that path, but we have no obligation to follow. Whether our Congress enacts such a bill or approves some "anti-warming" treaty is a decision to be made by our lawmakers strictly on the basis of U.S. laws and the Constitution, not on the basis of foreign pressure.