A caller to the Thom Hartmann show on Siriux XM’s lefty channel just now wanted to discuss how Democrats could use the Logan Act of 1799 to lock up congressional Republicans for having enthusiastically welcomed Benjamin Netanyahu to the Capitol without presidential blessing. The Logan Act is named for Senator George Logan of Pennsylvania, who went to France without official authorization to engage in what one poetical Wikipedia writer calls “semi-negotiations during the Quasi-War.” His voice heavy with regret, Hartmann explained to his caller that since Republicans were not technically negotiating with Netanyahu, they could not be locked up.
The law is a heartbreaker.
That is the modern Democratic party in brief, though: “Somebody is doing something that I politically disagree with! Why isn’t he in prison?” We could call the roll of Democrats and so-called liberals who gleefully contemplate locking up their political rivals: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Harry Reid and every single Democrat in the Senate, Adam Weinstein of Gawker and Mother Jones, Professor Lawrence Torcello, the Travis County district attorney’s office and its vodka-pickled boss, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson and the American Civil Liberties Union . . . the list grows daily. MoveOn.Org hosted a petition to have Republican House leaders arrested and tried on charges of sedition. Allen Clifton of Forward Progressives contemplated the same thing: “At What Point Do We Start Arresting Members of Congress for Sedition?” Cheer up, nameless radio call-in dope from Washington: You are not alone.
As John T. Flynn once warned: “Fascism is not the result of dictatorship—dictatorship is the product of fascism.”