Nancy Pelosi, Should She Resign as Speaker?

April 8, 2007

Her unauthorized trip to Syria has been all over the news this week. She was asked by the Bush administration not to make a trip to Syria to engage in “dialogue” with Syria’s President Assad, but took it upon herself to travel there anyways.

While there, Democrat Congressman Tom Lantos, who traveled with her, declared that Democrats have an “Alternative Foreign Policy”. Pelosi herself said, "We have no illusions but great hope."

After the visit, in a telephone interview with the Associated Press, Pelosi stated, "Our message was President Bush's message."

In June 2005, Pelosi said of Bush, “The American people understand what is at stake in Iraq and in the Middle East. That is why it is so disappointing that the President failed tonight, as he has failed consistently since the war began, to lay out specifics for success, including performance benchmarks.”

September 2006 brought the following quip from Speaker Pelosi; "It is one thing to give a speech about promoting peace, freedom, and democracy in broad, general terms as President Bush did at the United Nations today. It is another to commit to doing the hard work of diplomacy on a daily basis to resolve matters such as Iran's nuclear ambitions, Syria's support for Hezbollah, and the issues that divide Israelis and Palestinians.”

In a September 2006 campaign email sent out, titled ‘Despicable,’ she said, “President Bush will try to make terrorism the issue nationally, casting the election as a choice between two distinct approaches for protecting the nation from attack. He will continue to divide this country over national security, instead of uniting it.”

Just last month, March 2007, she stated, "President Bush’s Iraq policies weaken our military’s readiness, dishonor our nation’s promises to our veterans, and fail to hold the Iraqi government accountable for overdue reforms.”

Also last month, did she not ram through a Defense Spending Bill she added some $20 billion in vote-buying pork, including $74 million for peanut storage, $25 million for spinach growers, $283 million for dairy farmers and not one single dime for Veterans care or Military Hospitals? Yet, also sends our enemies a definite date of withdrawal from Iraq, giving them foreknowledge of the day we quit so they can wait us out, killing American Troops in the meantime?

And now, we are to believe and accept that she traveled to Syria, without White House approval, against the wishes of the White House to “deliver President Bush's message?”

Many conservatives, indignant over this usurpation of Executive Powers, are looking to the Logan Act for redress of her Illegal Diplomacy. Don’t waste your efforts. The act, created in 1799 forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments. In its history, there has never been a prosecution and only one indictment was ever handed down, in 1803.

If it were invoked, it undoubtedly would trigger a case straight to the Supreme Court with the expected 4 to 4 vote from the Justices, leaving Justice Kennedy to cast the deciding vote, again. It could be expected he would cast his lot with the Liberals approving of her “shadow presidency.”

Still, Pelosi should not be allowed to escape unscathed from this unconstitutional usurpation of Presidential authority.

Jerry Zeifman, Democratic Counsel of the House Judiciary for 17 years has written an article, Nancy Pelosi Should Resign, outlining several missteps she has taken in her short three months as Speaker as well as steps taken back when the Republican minority had a spine when Democrat former Speaker Jim Wright was eventually forced to resign from Congress over his undermining President Reagan’s Central American policy towards the Communists regimes of the late 1980’s. Our spineless Republicans today should follow suit.

Correspondent Ronald Kessler sees Pelosi As Our Neville Chamberlain, invoking the failed Diplomacy tried in 1938 to appease Hitler’s ambitions.

A Washington Post editorial, Pratfall in Damascus, labels her trip as “Nancy Pelosi's foolish shuttle diplomacy,” saying, “Ms. Pelosi's attempt to establish a shadow presidency is not only counterproductive, it is foolish.”

As mentioned in the Jerry Zeifman article, she has fostered what is known as "tyranny by the majority" and violated House Rules that give her the duty to maintain order, civility, and decorum, and to foster "comity," not only by her unauthorized trip, but by her attempts at strong arming others into accepting her choices for important seats in the House, regardless of any ethics or other investigations ongoing.

She has described herself as a partner in the Presidents power, clearly overstepping the Constitutional powers granted even to the Vice President as well as purporting to speak for the entire electorate when it was only a majority of San Francisco citizens that elected her as their spokesperson, not for the entire country.

It is clear to me that this woman has become even more power mad than the usual politician in Washington D.C. is. As far as I’m concerned, the only honorable thing for her to do is to resign, as she and other Democrats have called upon every member of the Bush administration to do. At least they haven’t grossly overstepped their Constitutional Authority in setting themselves up as “Queen.”

Lew

UPDATE: Queen Pelosi and Tom Lantos contemplating “DIPLOMATIC” trip to Iran