TUESDAY UPDATE: Senate Republicans are getting hammered by national media outlets for the now infamous “Iran Letter.” Bloomberg News looks at reactions from around the country, and the New York Daily News…well, the front page (right) is pretty clear.
Original post follows…
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Senate Republicans have taken a bizarre step in foreign relations, as Politico reports:
In a highly unusual move, a group of 47 Republicans in the upper chamber has written to Iran’s top leaders to let them know that any nuclear deal they reach with the United States would be “nothing more than an executive agreement.”…
…California Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called the letter “deeply irresponsible.”
“We are so far beyond politics ending at the water’s edge,” Schiff said on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports.” “And on an issue of this seminal importance while sensitive negotiations are going forward, for these senators to interfere in this way, it’s really unthinkable. And it just shows how the political process has degenerated that these senators would take such a step.”
Colorado Senator Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) is among the 47 signatories on the letter. Republicans control the largest majority in Congress since the New Deal…and they are writing letters to foreign leaders telling them to ignore the rest of the government.
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You have to wonder how butt hurt Corey would have been if Democratic Senators had engaged in such shenanigans towards then President Bush. I’m betting they would had said some bad words towards such bush league Senatorial antics. This might backfire big time on them and instead of scaring Iran off it will get them to do a deal just to piss off the Republican Israelis.
Are you kidding? They would have been screaming treason.
Who were the seven who refused to sign?
Sens. Jeff Flake, Lisa Murkowski, Lamar Alexander, Dan Coats, Thad Cochran, Susan Collins and Bob Corker didn’t sign the letter.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/09/politics/gop-senators-letter-to-iran/index.html
Sens. Flake, Coats and Corker just went up a couple of notches in my esteem. I expected no less from the others and no better from Gardner. There’s a great day coming for Cory.
It’s been a long time since supposedly so moderate and reasonable Susan Collins did anything but follow the herd.
Borderline treasonous.
BorderLine?
Like spoiled little brats, they do this without any expectation of consequences.
Unfortunately, they might be correct because no grownups are around in their party to teach them right from wrong.
Why do Republicans hate America so much? Because a majority of voters had the gall to elect a black man twice to the presidency, of course.
If Hillary does run, and win, I wonder how they would react then… She strikes me as someone that wouldn’t put up with this crap.
Cory even reminds me of the Squire of Gothos:
http://www.startrek.com/database_article/squire-of-gothos-the
God help me, I saw that episode before it was even a rerun!
me too!
She won’t. That’s one of the things I like about her. She’s not going to put up with crap from these guys or try to have a Kumbaya moment with Boner and McConnell.
And what would she do about it? In the past you could simply rely on the whole water’s edge thing, respect for the office and loyalty to their own government, regardless of who was in office, over foreign ones.. Those days are gone and if there’s anyone the Rs hate almost as much as a black man in the WH, it’s the Clintons. Don’t know how she’ll avoid putting up with a whole lot of crap.
In any case, I sincerely wish the Democratic establishment hadn’t left us with no other option. Looks like HRC or bust and I’m not a fan. I briefly had a positive view when it appeared that she was being a good team player SOS but as soon as she was out, she started showing her true, never forgive an opponent colors. She just hid her Obama resentment for a while better than Bill ever could. And I’m sorry. Yes, the Rs have always been looking for sleaze to pin on the Clintons but the Clintons haven’t exactly made that terribly difficult. Just because there was never enough to make anything but the sticky blue dress stick doesn’t mean there wasn’t plenty of stuff that didn’t smell so great.
As for the letter they wrote, there’s not anything she can do to stop them from writing a letter. But there is the bigger issue of how she would deal with a Republicans Congress, and let’s face it, we’re stuck with a Republican House and Senate until at least 2020.
HRC will know what she is dealing with coming into office. Hell, during the ’92 campaign, she was the one who came up with the War Room and the rapid response team. She saw how Dems had been losing elections throughout the ’80’s by taking the high road and refusing to get in the gutter and hit back (who can forget Michael Dukakis refusal to engage Daddy Bush when Lee Atwater was questioning Dukakis’ patriotism).
I hate to sound so cynical but it goes along with the nature of stuff in DC. One of my criticisms of Obama was that he put his hand out to these assholes when he took office only to see them snap at it. He was going to break up gridlock by being the post-partisan president. He was too open to trusting them. Big mistake which it took him three years for him to discover.
I was not surprised that they took off after him right after the election but perhaps I was a little naive in thinking that they would keep it on a higher, issues-oriented level. (I remember an incident in ’08 at which some bigoted woman took off on Obama at a McCain event and McCain, to his credit, chewed her and told her that Obama was a patriotic but misguided American.)
There were always going to be some people who would have trouble accepting an African-American president. But the extent of the ad hominem attacks (the racial stuff, the “otherness,” and all that crap) surprised even me. And that these attacks came from so-called lower-tiered leaders of the GOP (i.e. Walker, Giuliani, etc.) made it worse.
I don’t doubt that as ’16 approaches, the GOP’s inner racist will give way to the GOP’s inner misogynist. I just don’t see HRC putting up with a lot of the crap that Obama put up with during his first three years.
This is a blatant violation of the Logan Act. All 47 Republican Senators should be indicted immediately and the only recourse from a prison term is an apology accompanied by a letter of resignation from the U.S. Senate.
They’ll scream “Speech or Debate immunity”, but maybe it’s time that some Republicans were reminded that there are limits to their “peaceful overthrow” scheme.
To my knowledge no-one has ever tested the Logan Act in this particular situation. It was contemplated (and rejected) against two Senators who visited Cuba, but the State Dept. ok’d their travel at the time and AFAIK no presentation was made by the Senators then that they held authority that they did not in fact hold.
This is not, in fact, an act by a majority – not a legislative act authorized under the Speech and Debate Clause. And the letter directly claims authority that the Senators do not, in fact, have. If I were an enterprising US Attorney for the District of Columbia I’d consider filing charges – without any political oversight from the Obama Administration or DOJ.
More douchebaggery from the “Obama doesn’t count as a REAL American camp”. Do these dipshits understand that the Executive Branch consists of more than one fucking guy? Do these dumbasses know that any decision made on Iran is made with input from the DoD, CIA, State Department and probably at least 10 other departments whose entire reason for being is dealing with other countries?
They probably know this. They’re just 47 self-indulgent jackasses who think they know better than the black guy at the top.
Maybe throwing them in prison for 36 months may force them to rethink that…..
according to Ben Carson, they’ll come out gay.
That would be the understatement of the year.
But it would be their choice.
Snerk.
Paraphrasing the letter – “That’s a nice agreement you have there. It would be a shame should something happen to it.”
Iranian Foreign Minister, Dr. Javad Zarif, responds, basically tells the Republicans that they’re ignorant, arrogant assholes. Good for him!
http://en.mfa.ir/index.aspx?siteid=3&fkeyid=&siteid=3&fkeyid=&siteid=3&pageid=1997&newsview=330948
If I were among the letter’s 47 signers I would be embarrassed at how truly outclassed I was by the Minister’s response. I would consider it a sign that no member of the signing class of Senators – and that would include hopeful GOP 2016 contenders Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Lindsey Graham – was up to the job of higher office (and should in fact consider downgrading to something less challenging).
I don’t see much difference between these 47 assholes and the boys on the Oklahoma University bus…..
con man cory – traitor http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/nydn-blasts-gop-senators-iran-traitors
They should be the first 47 to go. I think we might need some ‘boots on the ground’ now. Iran must be stopped. Send in the 1st Senate Chickenhawk Brigade under Gen. John “Loco” McCain and Col. Lindsey DuBois-Graham.
Not shocking that the usual stooges for Republicans don’t have the stomach to defend this garbage.
Hey Moderatus don’t you have a grandson or two that you want to sacrifice for the good of the hard line militants in Israel?
Why did Udall have to run such a horrible campaign? Now we have 6 years of a man so partisan he violates the Logan act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Act) just try make a political point. What an embarrassment.
And a Dem Senator who’ll join him in trying to overturn a Dem President’s veto. Oh and our only Dem choice for 2016 is HRC, whom I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw and she’s pretty robustly built. Unless she bows out for her own reasons, it’s too late for anyone else now. She’s sucked up all the money and oxygen.
Not looking forward to 2016 as much as I should be considering demographics and the Dem advantage, both in a presidential year and in a year in which the Rs will be facing the same kind of tough Senatorial election map that Dems faced in 2014.
I let myself get all enthused about re-electing Udall and pushing out Coffman with Romanoff last year. What a waste of my time and energy that was. Can’t imagine who I’m going to want to go to all that trouble for in 2016. Dems just might have to win the next round with nothing from me but my reluctant vote.
More proof of how stupid and wrong these morans are is the fact that Ol’ Andrew Carnegie didn’t post a single comment supporting this traitorous move by his pals.
It’s pretty bad when AC can’t regurgitate one of the right wing talking points in their defense. Or at least post another beheading video clip to divert attention.
Aren’t Obama’s FEMA Camps ready yet?
they gotta collect all the guns, and ammo, first. (Sad, my brother actually believes this shit.)
Isn’t this exactly what the Denver Post meant about new blood making Washington, D.C. more functional when it endorsed Gardner?
I’m sure Vincent Carroll is quite pleased with his boy Cory. Not sure what Singleton and the editorial board think of this boneheaded move, however. Maybe we’ll see if they issue a rebuke of some sort in tomorrow’s Denver Ghost (thanks for that V’ger 🙂
The Daily News is a right wing rag popular in the. Archie Bunker sections of Queens and Staten Island. When it criticizes the GCP, that really is news
should be “GOP”
When you lose the Daily News, Repubs, you may just have gone too far.
Traitorous, racist GOP sons of bitches being pummeled mercilessly for their anti-American treachery:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/gop-iran-letter-backfires
The Republicans have reached a new low with this letter.
The executive branch is assigned the duty of negotiating international agreements, not the legislative branch. In certain instances, such as treaties, one house of the legislative branch, the U.S. Senate, is required to vote on whether to ratify a treaty. This attempt to undermine President Obama upsets and undermines the constitutional balance the Founders provided for us in 1787.
From a common sense perspective, these senators look like fools criticizing an agreement that has yet to be written. Their statement also lacks all common sense from the perspective of the legislative branch’s role in treaty making or other international agreements because, from the perspective of these forty-seven senators, international agreements with the United States aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. We have always prided ourselves in being a nation where the rule of law applies, where written agreements (contracts) should be honored. This attitude and value has brought stability to our society and is in many other places around the globe envied. These senators appear to be saying we won’t and don’t honor the agreements entered into by our government. To these senators, the rule of law no longer has any meaning.
The forty-seven senators apparently did not consider the consequences or principles they are, perhaps unwittingly, supporting. By undermining Iran’s incentive to sign and abide by an international agreement, they are in essence explicitly stating there is only one viable option to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons – war. If that is the result, the blood of every American serviceman and woman lost in such a conflict and those maimed physically or psychologically will forever be their responsibility. And let none of them say such a war will be easy. We won’t be fighting lightly armed tribes. Iran is an ancient and cohesive society that will fight. Even if we win, the ongoing occupation will be violent and costly.
What could be their motivation? Since they support war as the only option (they did not offer Iran any terms that would be met with their approval), their motivation is purely domestic political advantage. Playing for cheap political advantage by attempting to make war inevitable and the only option is a malicious act and a dereliction of their oath of office and their obligations to all of us; but especially our children who will have to fight and die in the war they seek to impose on us.
Thanks 36. That’s a pretty good recap of a pretty shitty political stunt. Warmongering bastards including Gardner.