USA Today: Pelosi steps out of bounds

[Regis Philbin]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20070406/cm_usatoday/pelosistepsoutofbounds

Pelosi steps out of bounds

Democrats in Congress have been busy flexing their foreign policy muscles almost from the moment they took power in January, for the most part responsibly. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi crossed a line this week by visiting Syria, where she met with President Bashar Assad. She violated a long-held understanding that the United States should speak with one official voice abroad - even if the country is deeply divided on foreign policy back home.

Like it or not, President Bush's policy has been to refuse to negotiate with Syria until it changes its behavior. That behavior is malignant. Syria has long meddled destructively in neighboring Lebanon and is widely seen as the bloody hand behind the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Syria has aligned itself with Iran and supports the violently anti-Israel groups Hezbollah and Hamas. It foments violence in Iraq by allowing suicide bombers and jihadists to cross the Syria-Iraq border.

Pelosi surely knew that as speaker - third in the succession line to the presidency - her high-profile presence in Damascus would be read as a contradiction of Bush's no-talkpolicy. No matter that she claimed to have stuck closely to administration positions in her conversations with Assad, smiling photos of Pelosi and the Syrian president convey the unspoken message that while the U.S. president is unwilling to talk with Syria, another wing of the government is. Assad made good use of the moment.

Also along was House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, D-Calif., who said the meeting was "only the beginning of our constructive dialogue with Syria, and we hope to build on this visit." That suggested Democrats are going beyond unobjectionable fact-finding and getting-to-know-you conversation into something closer to negotiations, undermining U.S. diplomacy.

[Regis Philbin]

http://opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009908

Illegal Diplomacy

Did Nancy Pelosi commit a felony when she went to Syria?

BY ROBERT F. TURNER
Friday, April 6, 2007 11:30 a.m. EDT

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may well have committed a felony in traveling to Damascus this week, against the wishes of the president, to communicate on foreign-policy issues with Syrian President Bashar Assad. The administration isn't going to want to touch this political hot potato, nor should it become a partisan issue. Maybe special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, whose aggressive prosecution of Lewis Libby establishes his independence from White House influence, should be called back.

The Logan Act makes it a felony and provides for a prison sentence of up to three years for any American, "without authority of the United States," to communicate with a foreign government in an effort to influence that government's behavior on any "disputes or controversies with the United States." Some background on this statute helps to understand why Ms. Pelosi may be in serious trouble.

President John Adams requested the statute after a Pennsylvania pacifist named George Logan traveled to France in 1798 to assure the French government that the American people favored peace in the undeclared "Quasi War" being fought on the high seas between the two countries. In proposing the law, Rep. Roger Griswold of Connecticut explained that the object was, as recorded in the Annals of Congress, "to punish a crime which goes to the destruction of the executive power of the government. He meant that description of crime which arises from an interference of individual citizens in the negotiations of our executive with foreign governments."

The debate on this bill ran nearly 150 pages in the Annals. On Jan. 16, 1799, Rep. Isaac Parker of Massachusetts explained, "the people of the United States have given to the executive department the power to negotiate with foreign governments, and to carry on all foreign relations, and that it is therefore an usurpation of that power for an individual to undertake to correspond with any foreign power on any dispute between the two governments, or for any state government, or any other department of the general government, to do it."

Griswold and Parker were Federalists who believed in strong executive power. But consider this statement by Albert Gallatin, the future Secretary of the Treasury under President Thomas Jefferson, who was wary of centralized government: "it would be extremely improper for a member of this House to enter into any correspondence with the French Republic . . . As we are not at war with France, an offence of this kind would not be high treason, yet it would be as criminal an act, as if we were at war." Indeed, the offense is greater when the usurpation of the president's constitutional authority is done by a member of the legislature--all the more so by a Speaker of the House--because it violates not just statutory law but constitutes a usurpation of the powers of a separate branch and a breach of the oath of office Ms. Pelosi took to support the Constitution.

[LesterX]

It's an op-ed piece. You try to make it seem like a big deal with the "Wall Street Journal" headline.

[LesterX]

Oooh, look, I can find an opinion piece with a different perspective than yours.


EVEN AS a matter of political self-interest, President Bush made himself look bad by carping about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit yesterday in Damascus with Syria's president, Bashar Assad.


Bush's complaint that Pelosi and the bipartisan congressional delegation were sending "mixed signals" made it appear that Bush either resents or refuses to accept the Constitution's unambiguous granting of extensive powers in foreign policy to the legislative branch. Pelosi and her colleagues were doing what innumerable delegations of senators and representatives have done in the past: traveling abroad to consult with foreign leaders, gather information, and enhance their ability to fulfill their obligations to advise, consent, and appropriate funds. Republican congressmen met with Assad last week. If the American system of checks and balances is to function properly, the co-equal legislative branch must exercise its powers to check and balance the actions of the executive branch.

...


The Iraq Study Group headed by former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton and former secretary of state James Baker recommended, as a potential means for stabilizing Iraq, that the administration engage in dialogue with both Iran and Syria. Baker, who obtained the cooperation of Bashar's father, Hafez Assad, in the 1991 war to chase Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, observed after the release of the group's report last December that talking with adversaries is not appeasement. This summarizes the tough-minded statecraft that Baker and the first President Bush practiced when waging the first Gulf war, managing the bloodless demise of the Soviet Union, and achieving the unification of East and West Germany.

This week in Damascus, Pelosi and her colleagues were following Baker's advice. And despite Bush's petulant assertion that "photo opportunities and/or meetings with President Assad lead the Assad government to believe they're part of the international community," US diplomats attended an Iraq security conference alongside Syrian and Iranian envoys last month in Baghdad. And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to participate in a meeting this month in Turkey with her Iranian and Syrian counterparts. Bush may not want to admit it, but he too has begun tip toeing in the direction of Baker's traditional deal-making statecraft.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2007/04/05/pelosis_balancing_act_overseas/