The author should have picked a better example than Jim Wright - his case isn’t anything like this - he didn’t resign over foreign policy or interference in foreign policy - he resigned because he took bulk book sales to get around speaking fee limits and because he tried to get an investigation into two friendly banks quashed.
Oh, and because a business crony hired Wright’s wife but she didn’t do any work. I think were 60+ accumulated ethics charges all having to do with some sort of small personal financial gain - he wasn’t even a smart crook.
The truth is the battle to control foreign policy goes back and forth and doesn’t have a clear constitutional divide.
And for the past few years the Administration has had more power but the current President is viewed as vulnerable and will be getting such challenges.
>Events have confirmed that together the President and Congress make foreign policy, but they have not resolved the question of which branch originates or finally determines policy. The two branches share in the process and each plays an important but different role. The question of who makes foreign policy does not have a more precise answer for several reasons.<<
The State Department web site has a history of the shifts in power between the Executive and Legislative branches including times when the Legislative branch has changed or modified the President’s policies - like when congress did not like President Carter’s shift away from relations with Taiwan.
http://fpc.state.gov/fpc/6172.htm
Thanks...I remember the Wright fiasco but didn’t remember those were the reasons he resigned. I did remember his trips to Central and South America and his efforts to circumvent foreign policy.
Well, but what where discussing here is a member of congress going overseas to communicate an entirely different (democrat) US policy to a foreign head of state directly.
It's one thing for the entire Congress to vote on what our relations with a country should be thereby directing the President to pursue such a course, but it's quite another to have individual members running off to offer alternatives to what is communicated directly by the executive branch, which has sole Constitutional authority over such matters. And doing so against the wishes of the President, as publicly expressed, before hand, by that very same President.
So legally, she is in violation of the Logan Act, and IMHO, guilty of Treason as well.