WHO CAN’T FIND IRAN ON A MAP?
The left has a new talking point — actually a taunt — regarding Tom Cotton’s letter to Iran. In unison, the left is tweeting that the Senator, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, couldn’t find Iran on a map.
Accusing a political adversary of being a yokel — that’s just the kind of insightful analysis we can count on from the left.
New York Times columnist Roger Cohen joined the chorus with this tweet: “Outrageous behavior from Republican senators who can’t find Iran on a map.”
But Bridget Johnson points out that it’s actually the New York Times that can’t locate Iran. Just yesterday, the Times offered this correction:
An earlier version of a map with this article mislabeled the country where the Islamic State has been destroying antiquities. It is Iraq, not Iran.
If there are yokels in this matter, they are to be found at the New York Times, not in the U.S. Senate.
THE LEFT’S NEW DEFINITION OF TREASON
Tom Cotton and 46 other senators have published an open letter to the government of Iran, in which they lay out the constitutional framework within which a president of the United States can negotiate international agreements. They point out that under Article II of the Constitution, an agreement with Iran has the status of a treaty only if it is ratified by two-thirds of the Senate. Otherwise, it is a mere deal with President Obama that can be repudiated by any future president.
To my knowledge, no one has tried to deny that what the letter says is accurate. Nevertheless, liberals are hysterically denouncing the Republican senators for reminding, not just the government of Iran, but the Obama administration and the American people, of what the Constitution says. As Scott noted earlier this morning, the New York Daily News has branded the 47 senators as traitors. Chris Matthews says that pretty much the entire Republican Senate delegation should be jailed under the Logan Act. Countless liberals on Twitter are echoing the Daily News in denouncing the Republicans as traitors.
As Paul notes, this is a bizarre reaction to an open letter that simply sets out basic constitutional principles. Paul points out that there is no analogy to prior incidents where groups of Congressmen and others have secretly tried to cooperate with hostile governments. I would add another instance to that list: Ted Kennedy’s secret attempt tocollaborate with the KGB in order to swing the 1984 presidential election to the Democrats. In this instance, Tom Cotton and his colleagues are not secretly conspiring with Iran to sell out the interests of the United States and its allies. That is, perhaps, what the Obama administration is doing. The Republican senators are publicly trying to prevent America’s most bitter enemy from getting nuclear weapons.
The Democrats’ cries of “treason” may be silly, but they are not meaningless. They tell us what liberals really think. Liberals (not all liberals, but most who are politically active on the Left) believe that nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of the leftward march of history. Certainly not the Constitution. In liberals’ minds, publicly citing the Constitution as an obstacle to executive action (by a Democratic president, of course, not a Republican one) is an act of lèse-majesté. To remind the American people of what the Constitution says is, if inconvenient to a Democratic administration, treasonous. Is that extreme, even crazy? Yes, but it is where American liberalism is today.
A QUICK THOUGHT ABOUT TOM COTTON’S LETTER
Judging from the reaction of the Left, Sen. Tom Cotton’s letter to Iran clearly struck a nerve. Never mind the hypocrisy of Democrats on this (anyone remember the “Dear Comandante” letter from House Dems to Sandinista dictator Danny Ortega back in 1984? Or just have a glance at the photo below, and remember that the guy on the left is the same guy in the room with Iranians right now). Curious, isn’t it, that Obama wants the imprimatur of Congress for a three-year battle plan against ISIS, but wants to bypass Congress completely on a 10-year weapons deal with Iran. Attacking ISIS is likely within his sole “commander-in-chief” powers, and in any case he could just rely on his Libya precedent of denying that he’s engaging in “hostilities” for purposes of the War Powers Act (which is unconstitutional anyway), while the “advise and consent of the Senate” clause on treaties seems to have fallen out of his pocket copy of the Constitution, which I just knowObama carries with him everywhere, right next to his Blackberry.
I recall also that Jimmy Carter briefly floated the idea in 1979 of concluding the SALT II Treaty with the Soviet Union also as an executive agreement instead of submitting it to the Senate, where it was in obvious trouble. The Senate, then with a decent Democratic majority (59 seats if I recall correctly), was not amused, and Carter quickly backed down. Times change I guess. Easy when you have the situational ethics of the Left.
Rather appears they like Ortega better than President Reagan.
No comments:
Post a Comment