When Sen. Jim DeMint and his Republican colleagues visited Honduras this week, they did so in support of a regime that shuts down opposition news media and arrests dissidents for “sedition.” They also, of course, did so in defiance of the foreign policy of the United States. But I suppose that if the anti-torture law doesn’t apply to Republican Presidents, then we can’t expect the Logan Act to apply to Republican Senators and Representatives.
Update Steve Benen points out that DeMint isn’t alone: going abroad to frustrate the foreign policy of the United States is now a fad in the Congressional GOP.
This sort of behavior has a well established pedigree in the GOP. Nixon and Kissinger, for electoral purposes, secretly scuttled LBJ’s attempt in 1968 to start Vietnam War peace talks with the North Vietnamese. Nixon, of course, went on to win the election based on a campaign that one antiwar group at the time characterized as “a secret plan to end an undeclared war, backed by a silent majority.” Of course, we all know how that went.
Isn’t subverting the diplomatic efforts of one’s own government to end a war treasonous? Just wondering…