As she began her trip at the beginning of the week, Mrs. Clinton said that human rights are “part of our agenda with the Chinese, as is climate change and clean energy and nuclear nonproliferation and dealing with the North Korean denuclearization challenge.”

But on Friday she told reporters traveling with her that issues of human rights and religious freedom “can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and security crises. We have to have a dialogue that leads to an understanding and cooperation on each of those.”

So there you have it. Money, climate change, and the “war on terror” are the issues.

Maybe this is just an acknowledgment that human rights and religious freedom aren’t that important to the US anymore.