Democrats have never done what 47 Republican senators

did to Obama
Dissatisfied with President Barack Obamas approach to Irans continued
march toward acquiring nuclear weapons, 47 Republican Senators
signed an open letter that was sent to the leaders of the Islamic Republic
of Iran. Arkansas freshman Sen. Tom Cotton authored the letter, which
was signed by all but seven Senate Republicans.
This action has been termed unprecedented, and has brought forth the
wrath of Democrats in Congress and the administration. Vice President
Joe Biden, for example, declared that "In 36 years in the United States
Senate, I cannot recall another instance in which senators wrote directly
to advise another country that the President does not have the
constitutional authority to reach a meaningful understanding with
them.
Secretary of State John Kerry expressed similar sentiments: This letter
ignores more than two centuries of precedent in the conduct of U.S.
foreign policy, and went a step further by saying that in his 29 years in
the Senate he had never heard of or even heard of being proposed
anything comparable to this.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said, Republicans are
undermining our commander-in-chief while empowering the ayatollahs.
We should always have robust debate about foreign policy, but it's
unprecedented for one political party to directly intervene in an
international negotiation with the sole goal of embarrassing the president
of the United States.
Other criticisms charged Republicans with trying to undercut the
president by inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to
address Congress without first consulting the White House, and then by
sending this letter to subvert an agreement that would avoid war, as
MSNBCs Mika Brzenzinski charged on the Morning Joe program. And
the pice de rsistance: the New York Daily News cover calling the
Republican letter signers traitors.

Some law professors, pundits and news media charge that the
Republican senators have committed treason by violating the Logan Act
of 1799, which states: "Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may
be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly
commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any
foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to
influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any
officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with
the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be
fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both."
And now for the rest of the story.
Predictably, there is far more heat than warranted here, Treason? No.
Traitors? No. Gross amounts of hyperbole? Absolutely! Deliberate
deception! Of course.
The Logan Act is not a factor here because, first, many legal authorities
believe the Act is constitutional, as it infringes on the free speech
guaranteed citizens by the U.S. Constitution, but also because the
senators represent one of two houses of a co-equal branch of
government, and therefore acted with the authority of their position,
which also allows them to take a part in agreements with other nations.
Most important, however, is that despite the breathless overstatements
by critics of the letter-writers, this action is not at all unprecedented, and
in fact some of the loudest critics have themselves indulged in similar
acts.
Take Secretary of State John Kerry, for instance. In 1971 during
negotiations by President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger trying to reach an end to the Vietnam War, then-Sen. Kerry, DMass., as leader of the anti-war group Vietnam Veterans Against the War,
travelled to Paris to meet face-to-face with the North Vietnamese
delegation, which was at the time an enemy combatant nation.
In 2007 then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Cal., met fact-to-face with Bashar
al-Assad while President George W. Bush was in negotiations with the
Syrian leader.

Another Speaker, Jim Wright, D-Tex., talked face-to-face with Nicaraguas

Daniel Ortega in 1987.
Senator James Abourezk, D-S.D., secretly met with Palestine Liberation
Organization chairman Yasser Arafat in 1973.
In 2006 Senators John Kerry, D-Mass., Chris Dodd, D-Conn., Bill
Nelson, D-Fla., and Arlen Spector R-Pa., (who soon after became a
Democrat) traveled to Damascus when the policy of the Bush
administration was to isolate the Bashar al-Assad regime.
The Left has a problem remembering these inconvenient facts, which are
probably contained in emails at the State Department or the IRS.
Furthermore, the letter was an open letter, not a private communication
and presented facts about our constitutional system the Iranians likely
did not know, not a negotiation.
The letter explained that any agreement between President Obama and
the Iranian leaders binds only President Obama; future presidents will
not be bound by it. Only treaties ratified by the Senate bind the U.S. That
is a significant point.
Further, the negotiations may well involve the president unilaterally
undoing sanctions against Iran passed by the Congress. That is a no-no;
he does not have authority to do that.
It is certainly fair to criticize the fact that the message was presented in a
letter addressed to Iranian leaders, instead of, say, being run as an op-ed
in one or more national newspapers. However, that is about the worst
aspect of this molehill called Mount Treason.