Senators take a stand for the Constitution

Just look what happens when a senator starts to act like one!

Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, who has been a U.S. senator for less than three months, rattled the cage of the White House, the Democratic Party, and Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei , all with a single-spaced, one-page letter on the U.S. Constitution.

Addressed as “An Open Letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the missive was signed by Cotton and 47 other Republican senators. The avowed intent of the letter was to educate the Iranians on the nature of the American constitutional system, in particular the role of the U.S. Senate in ratifying treaties negotiated by the president.

The letter is entirely accurate and an appropriate elucidation of the constitutional separation of powers. It does not in any way touch on the substance of the nuclear negotiations underway between the Obama administration and Khamenei ’s regime. Yet the letter had the same effect on American liberals that sunlight has on vampires. They screamed, they screeched, and they scrambled. For example:

—The Daily News of New York City went explosive with a WWIII-sized headline that condemned the GOP senators as “TRAITORS.” 

—Something like 275,000 people signed an online petition at whitehouse.gov declaring that the senators had committed treason and should be prosecuted under the never-before-successfully invoked 1799 law called the Logan Act, which in the words of the petition, “forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments.” 

—The Arizona Republic chided Sen. John McCain and the other 46 signatories for their “attempt to wrest foreign policy from the hands of President Barack Obama.” The editorial claimed that the senators attempted to “interfere with the negotiations of the elected official with the authority to barter with Iran, the president.”

The only problem with all this foaming at the mouth of progressive scribes and petition signers is that it reflects on their own rabid condition, and not on the actual facts of the case. 

Anyone who claims that the senators have committed treason does not know what the term means. This crime has the distinction of being defined in the U.S. Constitution, in Article III, Section 3, where it is noted that “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” If anyone wants to try to make the case that the 47 GOP senators had any intention of “giving aid and comfort” to the enemy (If Iran can even be defined as an enemy by any sort of legal code), good luck to them. 

It would not be the first time that Democrats ignored the facts in pursuit of sheer political gain. And as long as we are investigating treasonous activities, maybe we should look into whether freeing five senior Taliban leaders in exchange for the alleged deserter Bowe Bergdahl gave any of our Islamic enemies “aid and comfort.”

As for the Logan Act, it is aimed at any citizen 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 within the United States, or to defeat the measure of the United States.”

The only time the law has ever been applied was in 1803 when some poor miserable Kentucky farmer wrote an article in the Frankfort Guardian of Freedom proposing a separate nation in the Western territories that would align with France. So much for freedom in Frankfort, and so much for the freedom of speech. Yet this is the ridiculous law that our progressive brethren want to use to punish 47 United States senators.

Moreover, the text of the law itself exonerates the senators from its application. Senators obviously do have the “authority of the United States” to communicate with foreign governments, and have done so for the past 227 years. 

Indeed, the U.S. Department of State ruled in 1975 that Sens. John Sparkman, D-Ala., and George McGovern, D-S.D., were entirely in their rights to visit Cuba to hold discussions with officials there. The State Department declared that “Nothing in section 953 [the Logan Act] ... would appear to restrict members of the Congress from engaging in discussions with foreign officials in pursuance of their legislative duties under the Constitution.”

That’s good for John Kerry, the current secretary of state, who in 1985 as a Democratic senator traveled to Nicaragua along with Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, to broker a deal with the communist Sandinista government. “If the United States is serious about peace, this is a great opportunity,” Kerry declared.

Now, Kerry and the rest of the Democratic Party is saying something entirely different. They think the 47 senators who are trying to prevent a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East are misguided. President Obama said he was “embarrassed for them.”

So let’s put aside politics and examine this one-page document that led many people to accuse nearly half the Senate of being traitors. 

Oddly enough, it does not have anything to say about the substance of the negotiations being carried out by Secretary Kerry and President Obama. It doesn’t “attempt to wrest foreign policy” from the hands of the president, and it certainly doesn’t “interfere with the negotiations” with Iran, as the Arizona Republic claimed. It’s entire argument is about the United States Constitution and the powers assigned to the president and the Congress under it. Just read it. It’s almost as exciting as an eighth-grade U.S. history class!

“First, under our Constitution, while the president negotiates international agreements, Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them. In the case of a treaty, the Senate must ratify it by a two-thirds vote.”

Does that sound treasonous? How about this:

A so-called congressional-executive agreement requires a majority vote in both the House and the Senate (which, because of procedural rules, effectively means a three-fifths vote in the Senate). Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement.”

You getting a firing squad ready yet? Feeling the love between those 47 senators and Iran yet? Pretty cheeky, if you ask me. Aiding and comforting the enemy indeed!

But wait! It gets better:

“Second, the offices of our Constitution have different characteristics. For example, the president may serve only two 4-year terms, whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms.”

No wonder those Democrats and progressives are getting nervous: It appears that Republican senators have read at least part of the Constitution. What if they started following it? Now, that would be revolutionary, but I don’t know about treasonous. That just doesn’t seem like the right word.

In conclusion, the 47 neophyte students of the Constitution wrote, “What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”

This last part, along with a reference earlier to “binding international agreements,”  is what seems to have gotten both the president and the secretary of state ticked off.

Remarkably, Sen. Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the United States never intended the negotiations with Iran to result in a “quote, legally binding plan.” Therefore, it would not have to go to the Senate for ratification. It was, in essence, a “Gentlemen’s Agreement” between the former champion of the free world and the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East. 

If you don’t know what a “gentleman’s agreement” is, then look up the book or movie by that name. Or just read this quote from the movie: “I've come to see lots of nice people who hate [anti-Semitism] and deplore it and protest their own innocence, then help it along and wonder why it grows. People who would never beat up a Jew. People who think anti-Semitism is far away in some dark place with low-class morons. That's the biggest discovery I've made. The good people. The nice people.”

If 47 Republican senators are willing to stand up to anti-Semitism, then they have my support. And no, I’m not Jewish, although like the hero of “Gentleman’s Agreement,” I certainly have taken enough insults from people who think I am.

Don’t believe there is any anti-Semitism? Well, the same ayatollah who condemned the U.S. senators’ letter as “a sign of the decline in political ethics and the destruction of the American establishment from within,” also referred to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “Zionist clown.” And just four months ago, he Tweeted about Israel’s government, “This barbaric, wolflike & infanticidal regime of #Israel which spares no crime has no cure but to be annihilated.”

As for the idea of a non-binding agreement between the United States and another country, that is certainly an appropriate way to refer to a treaty that was not ratified by two-thirds of the Senate. It is just that — non-binding.

But it is also something else — unconstitutional. The U.S. Constitution is very clear about the powers granted to the president. In Article II, Section 2, it affirms, “He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur...”

There is no treaty without Senate ratification, and there is no other power granted to the president to complete “executive agreements” with foreign countries except with Senate ratification. President Obama may not like it, as he doesn’t like so many things in the Constitution, but he’s stuck with it.

Now, if we can only get the Republican senators to stick to their principles for a change, things may actually see a turn for the better. It’s the Constitution, stupid!

Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana.