In 2007, Republicans tried to turn Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to Syria into a major controversy, charging her with granting legitimacy to Bashar al-Assad and violating the Logan Act, which makes it a felony to engage in unauthorized diplomacy with a foreign country. One of the Republicans alleging Pelosi had actually committed a crime was Rep. Eric Cantor:
Presenting Assad with “a new Democratic alternative” — code for making President Bush look feckless — Mrs. Pelosi usurped the executive branch's time-honored foreign-policy authority. Her message to Assad was that congressional Democrats will forbid the president from increasing pressure on Damascus to stop its murderous way. Several leading legal authorities have made the case that her recent diplomatic overtures ran afoul of the Logan Act, which makes it a felony for any American “without authority of the United States” to communicate with a foreign government to influence that government's behavior on any disputes with the United States. Regardless of the law, Pelosi proceeded to make Assad an important regional player without first having to become a responsible one. At such a critical moment in the volatile Middle East, this is no time for the United States to be sending out mixed signals to our enemies.
Israel is not Syria, but in the midst of an administration effort to get Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop counterproductive settlement construction in occupied East Jerusalem, Cantor promised to oppose the administration's policies with regard to Israel. With friends like these, committed to enabling actions that hurt Israel's long-term interests by scuttling the peace process, Israel doesn't need enemies:
“Eric stressed that the new Republican majority will serve as a check on the Administration and what has been, up until this point, one party rule in Washington,” the readout continued. “He made clear that the Republican majority understands the special relationship between Israel and the United States, and that the security of each nation is reliant upon the other.”
Based on Cantor's own standard, he's just committed a felony. Lucky for him, no one's ever been prosecuted under the Logan Act.
