President Obama should ask the attorney general to investigate

[Lint Head]

and question the 47 Senators for possible prosecution of sedition, criminal mutiny or outright intentions to commit a coup. I bet some have lawyer-ed up already. They're cowards anyway you look at it.

[misterhighwasted]

1. Tie up the 47 in legal drama & then tie up Jeb in email b.s.

..until the end of the 2016 election.
Fuckers want to be president of the USA?? Ok then.

[Lint Head]

4. The Treasonous 47.They all want to go to heaven.

But they don't want to die. Or to have their sons and daughters die for their warped ideology.
They want our sons and daughters to die for it.

[delrem]

2. He's never done anything approximating that.

He applauded war criminals as being "patriots", he pretended that all those crimes were crimes of patriotic passion in the wake of a noun, a verb, and 9/11. And now he's in the thick of ever expanding war of his own devising. His first SoS applauds Henry Kissinger, and destroyed Libya, and began the war on Syria. His second SoS applauds Victoria Nuland, who helped his first SoS continue with PNAC's plans in the ME and who's been promoted to do the same w.r.t. Ukraine.

There's nothing peaceful about this, or different from the * regime. Not that I can see.

So it's all politicing about nothing, about no differences whatsoever except in tone.

[randome]

20. The thing about politics is this:

There is nothing to be gained by showing a losing hand. Nothing.

Obama would not have gotten a tenth of his accomplishments done if he'd gone after the torturers. The Republican Congress would have shut him down at every juncture.

It's the same thing for going after the 47. It won't happen because it can't happen.

You know what else won't happen? Moving the Earth farther from the Sun to mitigate the effects of climate change.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Where do uncaptured mouse clicks go?[/center][/font][hr]

[rhett o rick]

3. At the end of the day, they all belong to the same club. nm

[YarnAddict]

5. Because nothing says tin pot dictatorship

quite like investigating the opposition.

Have you even considered the possible blow-back from such an action?

[Lint Head]

6. The opposition are usurping the power of

the Commander and Chief. Congress is not "coequal" in this situation. An objective investigation is not out of the question. Blowback worries be darned. It is an unfounded fear. I fear the destruction of the Constitution more than blowback. They took oaths to uphold it not destroy it. The President does not interfere with Congtess' defined duties and Congress should not interfere with his. For example. Congress can impeach the President but the President does not have that power.

[YarnAddict]

8. Congress IS a co-equal branch

Always. Checks and balances, and all that.

Specifically in this case, Congress has been given the power to refuse to ratify treaties. By saying, "Well, it's not a treaty, so it's okay to cut Congress out of it" this can be seen as executive overreach.

I fear the destruction of the Constitution also. And this kind of thing--not the stupid letter, but talk about investigations, the Logan Act, frog-marching Senators, arrests, trials, and execution--is the very thing that can do it. Think of it this way: How much power to you want to give to the next Republican president? And, in spite of what you may have read here, there WILL be another Republican president, maybe as soon as two years from now. What do you want a President (shudder) Walker, or a President (shudder) Paul to be able to cut THE PEOPLE'S REPRESENTATIVES out of?

http://www.laits.utexas.edu/gov310/CF/seppowers/

The blow back from doing anything like that would affect the next election, and that would be a real problem.

(BTW, the president's title is Commander-IN-Chief, and it refers specifically to his role as head of the military. It has nothing to do with this agreement.

[cali]

12. wrong. there are no exceptions to Congress being a co-equal.

What YOU are advocating would be destruction of the Constitution. What they did is deplorable, but it is not treason or sedition.

[MineralMan]

7. That will not occur. President Obama is far too smart to do that.

His actual approach is much better. Nothing is gained by attempting to do something that cannot be done, and prosecuting Senators over this letter isn't something that is going to happen.

That is why you are not President and have no chance of becoming President.

[android fan]

9. President Obama is no longer bound by anyone

as he is finishing up the last two years, and should not face blowback at all.

Fact: The 47 Republicans broke the Logan Act. There is no doubt about it.
Fact: Obama has been letting Republicans get away with their crimes in the name of "bipartianship"
Fact: Obama shouldn't even let them get away with it especially when it involves other countries negotiating the same way.
Fact: Obama should be ordering Eric Holder to convene a grand jury to indict all 47 Senators with one count of Logan Act violation, and if they want to avoid their 3 year prison term, that the Senators must tender their resignation to the President of the Senate (Biden) effective immediately.
Fact: All of the Republican Senators are incredibly incompetent and should be removed from the chambers of the Senate.
Fact: The Republicans are not interested in helping the Americans help each other. They'd rather enrich the 1% and their pockets.

[MineralMan]

10. President Obama is bound by his love of country.

Prosecuting Senators isn't good for the country, so he won't do it. Creating constitutional crises is not something most Presidents will consider doing. President Obama will not do that. Instead, he will chide those Senators, and has done so already. Public opinion will be on his side, not theirs.

[cali]

13. No that is not a fact. It's an opinion- one which most legal experts disagree with

The text of the Logan Act makes it a crime for citizens to engage in “any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government . . . with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government . . . in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States.” As Peter explained yesterday, the Senators’ letter certainly seems to fall within this language. But, critically, the citizen must act “without authority of the United States.” Although most assume that means without authority of the Executive Branch, the Logan Act itself does not specify what this term means, and the State Department told Congress in 1975 that “Nothing in section 953 . . . would appear to restrict members of the Congress from engaging in discussions with foreign officials in pursuance of their legislative duties under the Constitution.” That doesn’t mean Members would have immunity under the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause; it just means the statute would arguably not apply in the first place. Combined with the rule of lenity and the constitutional concerns identified below, it seems likely that contemporary and/or future courts would interpret this provision to not apply to such official communications from Congress.

II. The First Amendment (and the Fifth)

The Logan Act, recall, was written in 1799, well over a century before the rise of modern First (and Fifth) Amendment doctrine with regard to protections for speech and against prosecutions for unclear misconduct. It seems quite likely, as one district court suggested in passing in 1964, that the terms of the statute are both unconstitutionally vague and in any event unlikely to survive the far stricter standards contemporary courts place on such content-based restrictions on speech. Thus, even if the Act does encompass official communications from Members of Congress acting within their legislative capacity, it seems likely that it would not survive modern First Amendment scrutiny were it to be invoked in such a case.

III. Desuetude

Finally, as Peter noted yesterday, the Logan Act has never been successfully used (indeed, the last indictment under the Act was in–not a typo–1803). Although most assume this is just a practical obstacle to a contemporary prosecution, it’s worth reminding folks about “desuetude”–the legal doctrine pursuant to which statutes (especially criminal ones) may lapse if they are never enforced (interested readers should check out a fantastic 2006 student note on the subject in the Harvard Law Review). If ever there was a case in which desuetude could be a successful defense to a federal criminal prosecution, I have to think that this would be it.

Of course, there are tons of practical and political obstacles to a Logan Act prosecution of these 47 Senators (or any other Member of Congress) as well. My point is simply to suggest that we needn’t even have that conversation given the (in my view insurmountable) legal roadblocks to any such Logan Act proceedings today. That doesn’t make the letter any less problematic; it just suggests its authors may not reasonably fear prosecution for writing it.

http://www.lawfareblog.com/2015/03/logan-act/

More:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/03/11/logan_act_tom_cotton_and_his_iran_letter_crew_acted_stupidly_but_the_law.html

[ananda]

14. Agree.

In a just world, all 47 Reeps would be tried and imprisoned.

[cali]

22. you seem to be deeply confused as to what is fact and what is opinion.

Not a single one of your claimed "facts", is actually a fact. They are ALL opinions. nothing more, nothing less. they sure as shit aren't fact.

[cali]

11. there are no grounds for this.

[Nye Bevan]

15. Yeah, so his legacy would be the guy who tried to send almost every opposition senator to prison.

When will DU stop with this utter nonsense?

[cali]

16. never.

[cherokeeprogressive]

21. Never. Nonsense seems to beget nonsense.

[hughee99]

17. Perhaps he should issue an EO instructing the Justice Department NOT to enforce

such laws in cases where the subject is a US senator. I would say it's sort of like amnesty, but it's definitely NOT amnesty.

[cali]

18. to what ends? It's hardly as if the Logan Act is regularly used.

[hughee99]

19. So the republicans can protest this executive

Power grab.

[dairydog91]

23. Why would he ask the A.G. to carry out an embarrassing faceplant?

They published an open letter on the Senate's official website. All Senators have broad immunity for any "Speech or Debate" they make in the Senate, and the Supreme Court is very generous in interpreting what a "Speech or Debate" is. You'd have a hard time convincing even a friendly Supreme Court to allow a prosecution here, and asking the current Court to allow prosecution is just asking to get slapped down hard. It would just be a show of weakness.