I consider Barack Obama a disastrous President.  I think he is inept and incompetent.  I do not trust him to tell the truth about anything.  I believe he regularly ignores the constitution.  And I especially oppose the negotiations he and John Kerry, his useless choice as our Secretary of State (Obama is two for two on that score) are conducting with Iran. 

But that does not, in any way, justify the undermining of Presidential authority by Tom Cotton and 46 other Republicans, who wrote to Iran\’s leadership advising them that, without congressional approval, any agreement they came to with Mr. Obama was subject to immediate reversal by the next President.

Did they express some understandable righteous anger?   Yes.  But, by so doing, they essentially told the radical lunatics of Iran that no agreement from this President was worth the paper it is written on.  Which is another way of telling them to ignore it.

Even worse, they undercut the authority of the Presidency itself – not just with Iran, but everywhere else.

Yes, I know that there is a legal basis for the information this letter passed along.  And, yes, I know that Iran\’s leaders would be ignoring any agreement they made regardless of whether the letter was sent.

But this action bespeaks a deep disrespect – not just for President Obama personally, but for the office he holds.

Even if I can justify the content of their letter on factual grounds (which I can)….and even if I can make the case that Barack Obama\’s years of running the presidency like a tinhorn dictatorship have brought on this reaction (which I can), it is the wrong thing to do.  Dead wrong.

I have often argued in here that you cannot fight racism by creating more of it.  Similarly Senators cannot fight an imperial presidency by staking out their own imperial turf as well.

I understand why they did this.  But its result is to hurt the country still further than Obama has hurt it.

I deeply regret their actions.  I hope, in retrospect, they do too.  And I hope we see no more of it in the future.

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UPDATE:  Democrats, and not a few of them – along with the New York Daily News in a front-page idiocy – are calling Republicans “traitors” for issuing this letter.  That, frankly, is sick vomit.

When I wrote the above blog, I intentionally left out instances in which Democrats did far worse than the Republicans did, because I did not want to muddy the point by making it look like nothing other than partisan political gamesmanship. 

But this despicable effort to pretend the letter was “traitorous”, causes me to reconsider.

Thirty years ago, a number of Democrat Senators wrote a love note to Nicaragua\’s dictator communist dictator Daniel Ortega, who won a highly controversial “election” as President and, in the tradition of hugo chavez, took his win to mean he could socialize the country. 

Excerpted from Humberto Fontova\’s article for National Review, dated December 27, 2012:

Many of Kerry\’sDemocratic congressional colleagues were content to flutter theireyelashes at the Communist cutthroatand pedophile from afar. Others, including Democratic majorityleader Jim Wright, courted him with a perfumed love letter. Kerrynaturally signed it.

“DearComandante,” the love letter began, “We want to commend you andthe members of your government for taking steps to open up thepolitical process in your country. The Nicaraguan people have not hadthe opportunity to participate in a genuinely free election for over50 years. We support your decision to schedule elections this year,to reduce press censorship, and to allow greater freedom of assemblyfor political parties.”

Infact Nicaragua was then being Stalinized, with Fidel Castro\’s help:wholsesale theft of private property, murder, exile and mass-jailingsof anti-Communists opponents. This process had John Kerry in such arapt and giddy condition that he apparently found The Democraticmajority leader\’s love note insufficiently adulatory. He yearnedfor a more intimate approach. So mere weeks after entering office in1985 he set off for Managua with fellow freshman Tom Harkin of Iowafor a chummy face to face session with the Communist pedophile andCastro-proxy.

Does that appear to be a bit more objectionable than advising Iran that an executive order can be overturned, which is what the Republican letter did? Maybe a lot more? Maybe 100 tons more?

And the senator featured in this effort, John Kerry? He\’s not just some senator now, he is our Secretary Of State.

With this in mind, maybe the Democrats screaming “traitor” should think about what their own people have done in the past.

And maybe all of us should consider which is worse:  47 Republicans signing that letter to Iran, or the Democrat Party of the United States calling half of the elected senate traitors.