I think I read it on eco-logic.
I wrote and posted this article on FR in 2007 (no longer on the server).
In the last days of the 106th Congress, the U.S. Senate ratified a package of 34 treaties almost without notice. They were ratified as a package. There was no debate. There was no recorded vote. Two of them have implications nearly as broad as the Convention on Nature Protection: the International Plant Protection Convention and the Convention on Desertification. Property rights groups, long used to this kind of perfidy were caught totally by surprise. When the deed was done and Jesse Helms was confronted, he looked at the activists and said that we had dropped our guard. Here is an archive containing Henry Lamb's comments. Use the Acrobat search function to look up the word "stealth." I'll quote it now:
The Law of the Seas Treaty was rejected by Ronald Reagan in 1982. After some polishing around the edges of the treaty language, Bill Clinton signed the treaty in 1994, and sent it to the Senate for ratification. There it sat, dormant, until October 7, 2003. Mysteriously, the treaty appeared on the Foreign Relations Committee hearings calendar on October 14, and October 21, but no opposing voices were allowed to present testimony. This is precisely the same procedure used with the Convention on Desertification. Next, a request for unanimous consent is issued. If no Senator files an objection within a specified period of time, then the treaty can be approved by a voice vote, with no votes recorded.
After the Convention on Desertification was ratified by unanimous consent, many Senators did not know it had even been considered, or that they had voted for it.
Next, a request for unanimous consent is issued. If no Senator files an objection within a specified period of time, then the treaty can be approved by a voice vote, with no votes recorded.There it is!
Here and here.
"They need to formalize their intent to object."
Homework done!
This "signing a letter" BS is meaningless if proper action isn't taken.