Treason Goes Unnoticed

Posted April 23, 2008, 9:53 a.m.

It wasn’t that long ago that I pointed out Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had committed a felony when she went to Syria and met with its leaders in a foreign-relations capacity without authorization from the president. The so-called Logan Act (USC Title 18, Part I, Chapter 45, §953), passed in 1799, prohibits U.S. citizens from engaging in foreign relations without the ‘authority of the United States’ (and the executive, not Congress, is granted Constitutional responsibility for foreign affairs).

Now, former President Jimmy Carter (D) has committed a similar act. Again, nobody seems to care.

Carter, against instructions from the Bush administration, traveled to the middle-east and held a meeting with the leaders of Hamas. Hamas is a recognized terrorist organization that holds de-facto control of the Gaza Strip and legislative control of the entire Palestinian National Authority. Jimmy Carter might not have noticed (too busy polishing his Nobel Peace Prize?), but we’re in the midst of a War on Terror. An argument could easily be made that by meeting with Hamas leadership, Carter not only violated the Logan Act but also committed treason. A former U.S. president meeting with a known terrorist leader grants that terrorist leader legitimacy. If giving a terrorist leader legitimacy isn’t giving ‘aid and comfort’ to avowed enemies of the United States (U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 3), what is?

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.

Quotes

For the worship of idols not to be named is the beginning and cause and end of every evil. For their worshipers either rave in exultation, or prophesy lies, or live unrighteously, or readily commit perjury; for because they trust in lifeless idols they swear wicked oaths and expect to suffer no harm.

Holy Bible

I speak in Latin to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.

Unknown

At every point, religion and politics interlace, and must do so more acutely as the conflict between the two great camps of men—those who reject and those who worship God—becomes irrepressible.

Whittaker Chambers

An ignorant person is one who doesn’t know what you have just found out.

Will Rogers

In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things.

René Descartes

The first movie I ever saw was a horror movie. It was Bambi.

Stephen King

[Groos] well says that children are young because they play, and not vice versa; and he might have added, men grow old because they stop playing, and not conversely. . . .

G. Stanley Hall

If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.

Sylvia Plath

We rail against ‘special interests’ except when the ‘special interest’ happens to be our own.

Milton Friedman

The more base and corrupt a man, the more ready is he to charge crimes to others. Those who want credit for good character foolishly believe that the best way to get it is to denounce others.

Fulton Sheen

The ugly fact is books are made out of books. The novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written.

Cormac McCarthy

Although man has many points of resemblance with the brute creation, one characteristic is peculiar to himself—he improves. . . .

Alexis de Tocqueville

Let us speak courteously, deal fairly, and keep ourselves armed and ready.

Teddy Roosevelt

We have been forgetting the basic truth that the greatest threat to human freedom is the concentration of power, whether in the hands of government or anyone else.

Milton Friedman

Few Christian doctrines are taught in the Bible as clearly and as explicitly as is the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

Jimmy Seghers

We are the only spirits that have bodies and the only animals that have spiritual souls. We are the lowest and stupidest angel and the highest and smartest animal, or rather, we are neither; we are ourselves.

Peter Kreeft

Not to be deceived in matters of faith, we must always distinguish very carefully between the abuses to which a devotion may lead and the truths upon which the devotion rests.

U.S. Conf. of Catholic Bishops

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

Bertrand Russell

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.

Jack Handey

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.

James Madison