Get Carter! [Time to invoke the Logan Act?]

It was a good day for democracy – Saddam Hussein caught at last. Just weeks ago, though, democracy had a bad day, when a freelance "peace" agreement was unveiled in Switzerland by an unelected Israeli citizen – an instance of anti-democracy abetted by arch anti-democrat, Jimmy Carter.

I doubt that anyone would characterize Carter as a mass murderer, though as president he ushered in the era of Islamic fanaticism responsible for more murders than one would care to count. But Hussein and Carter both have a history of treating democracy with contempt – one through violence, the other through a pathological compulsion to speak for people who, except under threat of torture or death, would never elect him to office.

A well-known example occurred in 1990, during the run-up to the first Gulf War, when Carter lobbied UN Security Council members to oppose the U.S. effort to stop Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. In the dozen years since that war, Carter's crimes have yet to be prosecuted.

And yes, Carter's unauthorized diplomacy constitutes serious criminality. Title 18 of the US Code, Sec. 953, says that "Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measure or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States" shall be fined or imprisoned.

That statute, known as the Logan Act, demands that diplomatic matters, on which the fate of the nation may hinge, be reserved to the elected government. Thus, when, in 1798, a Quaker from Philadelphia named George Logan went to Paris to negotiate with the French government in a personal effort to avert war between France and the United States, an outraged Congress passed "An Act to Prevent Usurpation of Executive Functions."

The basic principle behind the law – that only an elected leader may speak for a nation – is inherent to democracy. Hussein flouted that principle through force, Carter by usurping the prerogative of the president to be, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1790, "the only channel of communication between the United States and foreign nations."

Recent, unauthorized talks with the West Bank Arabs – which likely had the secret blessings of Yasser Arafat and were therefore "with" a "foreign government" – had the intent of influencing the conduct of (to Carter) another foreign government, that of Israel. Carter may have had no role in the actual talks, but by participating in the "ceremony", he became a conspirator with self-appointed Israeli "diplomat" Yossi Beilin. (A conspirator need not take part in every part of a plan – or even know all of a conspiracy's members. As Black's Law Dictionary makes clear, he need only "know the purpose of the conspiracy and agree to become a party to effectuate that purpose.") By the plain meaning of Logan, then, Carter would seem to have "directly or indirectly" taken part in "intercourse" with a "foreign government... in relation to" a controversy that involves the United States.

If such behavior is a significant crime, why did former President George H. W. Bush decline to press charges against Carter back in 1990, as he certainly could have, and send the man to prison? One can only speculate. But here's a broader question: Why, in over two centuries, has Logan never been used to prosecute anyone?

One answer may be that disuse of the statute is self-perpetuating. A dormant law generates no case law as guidance on such issues as: In what sense must a controversy be "with the United States"? What counts as "intercourse" with a foreign government – and how "indirect" may it be?

Uncertainty may be daunting, but, as we have recently demonstrated in Iraq, it's no reason to allow fundamental principles to fall by the wayside. Those who threaten democracy – even if "only" by a usurpation of presidential authority – must be stopped.

We have the tool; we just need the will. Then, someday, a prosecutor might say of Jimmy Carter: "We got him!"

If you'd like to be on or off this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

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Jimmy Carter, on Israel and the Jews

1979: "I have never met an Arab leader that in private professed a desire for an independent Palestinian state. Publicly, they all espouse an independent Palestinian state -- almost all of them -- because that is what they committed themselves to do at Rabat (the 1974 Arab League summit conference)."
--President Jimmy Carter
a 1979 press conference

Early 1980: …at a March 1980 meeting with his senior political advisers, angrily snapped, "If I get back in, I`m going to f--- the Jews."
Jimmy Carter, March 1980

Late 1980: Cyrus Vance…confirmed to then-New York mayor Ed Koch that Carter, if reelected, would "sell out" the Jews
Jimmy Carter shortly before the 1980 election

2003: …had I been elected to a second term, with the prestige and authority and influence and reputation I had in the region, we could have moved to a final solution
Jimmy Carter, 12-1-2003

Jimmy Carter: "Useful Idiot" or "Traitor"?

"[Marshall Tito] is a man who believes in human rights.
[He is] a great and courageous leader [who] has led his people
and protected their freedom almost for the last 40 years."
-- Carter, while still in office, hailing Yugoslavia's communist dictator

"Our goals are the same: to have a just system of economics and
politics ... We believe in enhancing human rights."
-- Carter comparing himself to Romania's dictator Nicolae Ceausescu

"Our concept of human rights is preserved in [Communist] Poland."
-- Carter speaking to Stalinist Edward Gierek, Poland's First Secretary

"[I am] ashamed of what my country has done to your country."
-- Carter speaking to Haitian dictator Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras

"I don't see that they [the North Koreans] are an outlaw nation."
-- Carter in North Korea, lauding Stalinist Kim Il Sung,
one of the most destructive and repressive dictators in history

"Ill-informed commentators in both countries have cast the other side
as a villain and have even forecast inevitable confrontation
between the two nations."
-- Carter making exquisite moral equivalence between the giant and
repressive Chinese Communist state and America

Carter gave away US oversight of the Panama Canal, "the most
important waterway in the world," says Adm. Thomas H. Moorer (ret),
which is now "packed with Chinese communists."

Sadat, appalled that Carter wanted the Soviets in on Middle East peace
negotiations, decided to directly offer peace to Israel's Begin. When
their plan was essentially worked out, they then called the White House,
because obviously, "they needed someone to pay the bill" (Bernard Lewis).

Not resting on his laurels, Carter demanded the Shah of Iran step down
and turn over power to the Ayatollah Khomeini, an Islamic madman. Carter
had the Pentagon tell the Shah's top military commanders - about 150 of
them - to acquiesce to the Ayatollah and not fight him. The Shah's
military listened to Carter. ALL OF THEM were murdered in one of the
Ayatollah's first acts. By allowing the Shah to fall, Carter created one
of the most militant anti-American dictatorships ever. Soon the new Iranian
government was ransacking our embassy and held hostage its staff for over
a year. More than 20,000 pro-Western Iranians were put before firing
squads. With the Shah gone, the whole region was destabilized.

Iraq took advantage of the Shah's departure to invade Iran, a war that
killed more than 500,000 people. It also created the regional instabilities
that led to Iraq’s later invasion of Kuwait and to Operation Desert Storm,
which cost the lives of hundreds of thousands more. But Carter meant well.

In the closing days of the 1980 election, Carter's White House contacted
the Soviets in a quid pro quo to plead for assistance in stopping Reagan
from winning. In 1984, Carter himself visited Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin
to ask the Soviets to intervene on behalf of Democrats. Damning evidence
that Jimmy Carter, as both president and citizen, may have committed treason
by enlisting the help of our enemies in presidential elections.

Since leaving office, Carter has:
- praised Syria's late Assad (killer of at least 20,000 in Hama)
- praised Ethiopian tyrant Mengistu (killer of many more than that)
- secured Saudi funding for Arafat after he sided with Iraq against the US
- wrote the UN Security Council after Iraq invaded Kuwait, urging them
to thwart President Bush's pre-Gulf War coalition (designed to reverse
that act of aggression) - another action some called "treason"

"Our people, who face Israeli bullets, have no weapons: only a few stones
remaining when our homes are destroyed by Israeli bulldozers."
-- from a speech written by Carter for Yassir Arafat

"[Arafat's] election [was] democratic, well organized, open and fair."
-- Carter describing the "rigged" 1996 Palestinian election

"[Arafat] may well see the suicide attacks as one of the few ways
to retaliate against his tormentors, to dramatize the suffering of
his people, or as a means for him, vicariously, to be a martyr."
-- Carter in an apologia for the Pali homicide-bombings

And yet, with the blood of perhaps a million people dripping from his hands,
Carter stalked the earth in his sick quest to be given a Nobel Peace Prize.

If he had any moral center at all, he would return his recent peace prize.

Carter is the smiley face of evil.

R E F E R E N C E S:

Jimmy Carter: America basher
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/jonahgoldberg/jg20020515.shtml

Carter: Cuba Terror Claims False
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/682807/posts

There He Goes Again
http://www.nationalreview.com/20may02/nordlinger052002.asp

You Didn’t Ask for It, You Got It: Carterpalooza!
http://www.nationalreview.com/impromptus/impromptus050302.asp

Carter & Castro
http://www.frontpagemag.com/columnists/ponte05-08-02.htm

Jimmy Carter’s Trail of Disaster
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/5/12/164726.shtml

'Idiotic' Carter Castro's Dupe
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/5/15/202903.shtml

Carter, Democrats Asked Soviets to Stop Reagan
http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2002/10/16/214040

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