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WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a visiting group of U.S. lawmakers to relay to Syria that Israel had no intention of attacking it, according to one of the participants on the trip, Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn. "He very clearly said he was worried that Syria might misinterpret some things that were happening in Israel, and he didn't want to end up in an accidental war with them," Ellison, the first Muslim member of Congress, said in a telephone interview Saturday. "So he told us to tell them that he was not planning to attack them."...

Syrian Information Minister Mohsen Bilal threatened on Monday evening to return the Golan Heights to Syrian hands "by way of resistance if Israel [rejects] the Arab peace initiative."

After praising Syria following a meeting in Damascus with President Bashar Assad, Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich declared he will not visit troops in Iraq during his Middle East tour because he considers the American military presence in Iraq to be illegal. "I feel the United States is engaging in an illegal occupation ... I don't want to bless that occupation with my presence," Kucinich said in Lebanon, according to the Associated Press. "I will not do it." The Ohio congressman accused the Bush administration of destabilizing the Middle East and praised Syria for receiving Iraqi refugees. "What most people...

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is a cross between Little Red Riding Hood and the Wicked Witch of the West. I'll get you Mr. Bush, and your little dogs, too. The Democrats have presented the United States with one nightmare representative after another and this time, she's in third place in the power line-up. Hockey fans would concur, conservatives need a power play, especially if they intend to be in the political playoffs come '08. Where does Madame Pelosi come off traveling to Syria and delivering a message from Ehud Olmert that Mr. Olmert himself never communicated to...

The Democrats seem to be setting up a separate government with its own suicidally blind idea of who’s a terrorist and who isn’t (basically, nobody is), as Nancy Pelosi makes plans to meet with the chinless ophthalmologist of Syria: Speaker Pelosi Traveling to Middle East. ABC News’ Jonathan Karl Reports: ABC News has learned Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi plans to visit Syria next week to meet with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. The visit will make Pelosi the most senior U.S. official ever to meet with President Assad. Pelosi will be traveling to Syria has part of Congressional delegation....

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, wears a scarf inside Ommayad Mosque during her tour at a popular market in downtown Damascus, Syria, Tuesday April 3, 2007. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Syria on Tuesday, the highest-ranking American politician to visit the country since relations began to deteriorate four years ago. President George W. Bush criticized the trip, saying it sends mixed signals to President Bashar Assad. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Nancy Pelosi has persistently violated her duty to exercise her speaker powers in accordance with the Constitution and the current "106th Congress House Rules Manual" (House Document 106-320). In short, she has fostered what is known as "tyranny by the majority" — and violated House Rules that give her the duty to maintain order, civility, and decorum, and to foster "comity" (a word rarely used these days, meaning "mutual respect"). The "House Rules Manual" includes Jefferson's "Manual of Parliamentary Procedures," originally drafted by the founder of the Democratic Party when, as vice president, he presided over the Senate from 1797...

Nancy Pelosi is to world diplomacy what Michael Jordan was to baseball: completely forgettable and unnecessary. But unlike Michael's slightly amusing foray into the Babe's world, there's nothing funny about Pelosi in Damascus. The terrorists and their supporters, who are always looking for weak links and signs that the US does not have the will or backbone to win the war we're fighting with them, just found a great ally in Madame Speaker. Among the older members of my extended Syrian family, there was a general attitude that kindness equaled weakness. It wasn't that they didn't believe in charity, but...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may well have committed a felony in traveling to Damascus this week, against the wishes of the president, to communicate on foreign-policy issues with Syrian President Bashar Assad. The administration isn't going to want to touch this political hot potato, nor should it become a partisan issue. Maybe special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, whose aggressive prosecution of Lewis Libby establishes his independence from White House influence, should be called back. The "Logan Act" makes it a felony and provides for a prison sentence of up to three years for any American, "without authority of the United States,"...

AP - Tue Apr 3, 1:38 PM ET U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, wears a scarf inside Ommayad Mosque during her tour at a popular market in downtown Damascus, Syria, Tuesday April 3, 2007. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Syria on Tuesday, the highest-ranking American politician to visit the country since relations began to deteriorate four years ago. President George W. Bush criticized the trip, saying it sends mixed signals to President Bashar Assad. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)   AP - Tue Apr 3, 2:33 PM ET A Syrian vendor, offers sweets to the U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,...

Kucinich Meets with Syrian President Sunday, September 2, 2007 6:46 PM DAMASCUS, Syria -- U.S. Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, a Democratic presidential candidate, met Sunday with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as part of a Middle East peace initiative and fact-finding tour to several countries over the next five days. In the meeting with President Assad, Kucinich is expected to discuss approaches to dealing with the continued violence and instability in Iraq, as well as to discuss the Baker Hamilton report to the U.S. Congress which recommended direct engagement with Syria as part of a new Middle East foreign policy initiative....

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Saturday that young people around the world are "weary of war" and hold the greatest hope of forging peace through dialogue. Pelosi addressed about 250 graduates of the University of San Francisco's McLaren College of Business in her home district, where she was introduced to thunderous applause from students and their families. Without directly mentioning President Bush or the impasse with Democrats over an Iraq war spending bill, the Pelosi criticized "some world leaders" who question the value of "constructive dialogue." "The young people I have met on my travels are weary of war," Pelosi...

PRESIDENT BUSH'S DECISION to finally push back against the "Bush lied!" fable paid off in strange ways this past week. Democrats seemed caught by surprise that the president would attack them so frontally on Veteran's Day; the shock caught them flatfooted all weekend long. Senators from the minority caucus could not explain their own words from 2002 supporting the same intelligence, and the same conclusions, as the Bush administration. The strangest episode came from an appearance by Senator Jay Rockefeller on Fox News Sunday: WALLACE: OK. Senator Rockefeller, the president says that Democratic critics, like you, looked at pre-war intelligence...

The arrival of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who came to Baghdad on Saturday with a congressional delegation, set off a now-familiar cycle of reaction in the Iraqi capital. First there was buzz around the city about flight delays from Baghdad International Airport, which goes into lockdown when VIPs land or takeoff. Since no dust storms were grounding flights, anyone traveling could have assumed some American bigwig was heading in. But when local TV reported the visitor was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, there was a collective shrug of the kind you might expect from Republicans catching a glimpse of her somewhere...

I suppose you could chalk it up to his concern for the Dems' long-term best interests, but there's no denying that on this morning's "Today," Matt Lauer absolutely unloaded on Nancy Pelosi and her ill-conceived venture into foreign policy. The segment was entitled "Democratic Diplomacy: Has Pelosi Gone Too Far?", virtually answering the question by its very asking. In the set-up piece, David Gregory rolled two telling clips. The first was of VP Cheney's comments on the Rush Limbaugh show yesterday to the effect that Pelosi's statement regarding her trip was"nonsensical." The second was of former congressman Lee Hamilton, warning...

US Democratic presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich, on a Mideast visit that included a stop in Syria, said the country lambasted by the Bush administration deserves credit for taking in more than a million Iraqi refugees. Kucinich, a strong anti-war opponent who trails far in the US presidential polls, also said he won't visit Iraq on his trip to the region because he considers the US military deployment there illegal. "I feel the United States is engaging in an illegal occupation ... I don't want to bless that occupation with my presence," he said in an interview in Lebanon, after visiting...

Nancy Pelosi has persistently violated her duty to exercise her speaker powers in accordance with the Constitution and the current "106th Congress House Rules Manual" (House Document 106-320). In short, she has fostered what is known as "tyranny by the majority" — and violated House Rules that give her the duty to maintain order, civility, and decorum, and to foster "comity" (a word rarely used these days, meaning "mutual respect"). She also denied a request by President Bush (who has primary constitutional authority over the conduct of foreign policy) that as the third-highest official of the United State she not...

It's Spring Break. A time when boys and girls, pretending to be adults, go to places they know they shouldn't; do things they wish they hadn't; and pray they don't show up in a "Girls Gone Wild" DVD later on. It's one thing to be a college student, drunk on Jello shots, at the beach bar in Daytona, lifting your shirt for some dope with a video camera. It is something else to be the Speaker of the House, drunk on power, making a fool of yourself by pretending to be a diplomat and going to the Syrian desert. The...

Two U.S. senators went against their usual party lines today to defend and criticize Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Cali., over her recent trip to Syria. Speaking with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, Penn., said the Democratic leader did the right thing by going to Syria and meeting with President Assad, a trip the White House denounced. "She has a very prominent constitutional role in determining what's going to happen in the Iraq war," he said. "I don't think it is helpful for people in the administration to characterize her as being engaged in, quote 'bad behavior,'...

DAMASCUS: Syria’s Pre-sident Bashar al-Assad has won a second seven-year mandate after netting 97% of the vote in a referendum boycotted by the opposition, officials announced yesterday. Interior Minister Bassam Abdel Majid said Assad, 41, won a massive 97.62% in Sunday’s referendum, with some 11.19mn Syrians taking part, or almost 96% of those eligible. In a referendum in which Assad, who has resisted Western pressure to reform Syria, was the sole candidate, “no” voters numbered almost 20,000 and some 250,000 ballots were void, he said.