Posted by
Bullfrog on Thursday, June 21, 2007 8:18:45 PM
An article in Roll Call says that Republicans have introduced an amendment to the State and Foreign Operations bill that would limit Nancy Pelosi's foreign travel to Syria, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Cuba.The amendment to the $34 billion State and Foreign Operations bill,
offered by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), prohibits funds to be used to
travel to Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan or Syria.
In
a “Dear Colleague” letter released earlier today, King said Pelosi had
overstepped her constitutional role as Speaker when she traveled to
Syria in April.
Despite President Bush's pleas to forgo the trip, Secretary of State Speaker of the House Pelosi took it upon herself to engage in foreign policy. Clearly, foreign policy is an executive branch function, not a legislative branch function. Ms. Pelosi blatantly chose to ignore her legislative duties, which are limited to lawmaking.
King told The Hill that he believed Pelosi was in violation of the
Logan Act, a 1799 law signed by President John Adams that prohibits
unauthorized U.S. citizens from interfering with relations between the
United States and foreign governments.
Nobody has ever been prosecuted under this law, and I don't believe Pelosi will be, either, but it's pretty clear that she stuck her nose where it didn't belong.He said that it was not the visit that caused him
to introduce the measure, but Pelosi’s decision, in his perception, to
act as a diplomat that made him take action.
“She
carried a message from Israel to Syria and that message according to
representatives of both Syria and Israel wasn’t consistent with what
one of them agreed to … these are the kind of problems you get,” he
said.
In other words, not only did she overstep the bounds of her role as Speaker of the House, but also she got the messages from both other nations wrong! If that's not interfering, I don't know what is. It would seem the goal of this amendment is simply to make sure this sort of misstep never again happens.
She obviously can't even get the messages right acting as a go-between. It's like a game of "telephone" at a kid's birthday party or sleep-over. The message starts out something along the lines of "My shirt is red," and comes out "I'm a turkey vulture," except that it missed the intermediate stages:
1. Red becomes red hawk
2. Red Hawk becomes bird of prey
3. Bird of Prey becomes turkey vulture
I for one do not want anyone in the legislative branch of our government, Speaker of the House or otherwise, engaging in foreign policy. It's not the role of that branch of the government, and clearly she's not up to the task of she can't even play go-between without getting it wrong. If the governments of both Syria and Israel had to have press releases announcing that she's mangled their messages, then she's going about it all wrong. Let's clip that old bird's wings.