This is really amazing and really stupid:

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) has announced that he is heading down to Honduras to encourage those who helped fund and supported the coup against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya to resist American pressure to return Zelaya to office.

The US Department of State has begun to revoke the visas of wealthy supporters of the military coup.

In other words, Jim DeMint is acting on behalf of, in cahoots with, and against the foreign policy of the United States of America in encouraging post-coup Honduran government officials defy the United States. He is encouraging a political leadership which has no legitimacy and which not recognized by other democracies in the region — while the ousted President makes cell phone UN General Assembly statements from a couch-bed in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa.

John Kerry and the Obama administration has grounded DeMint’s trip, but he appears poised to fight it.

This has me thinking back to when Speaker Pelosi traveled to Syria. She wasn’t there as opposition to U.S. foreign policy, but rather to help reinforce it, yet the right was screaming and demanding she be prosecuted for it. Here’s a reminder from the WSJ in 2007:

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,” to communicate with a foreign government in an effort to influence that government’s behavior on any “disputes or controversies with the United States.” Some background on this statute helps to understand why Ms. Pelosi may be in serious trouble.

Again – Pelosi was there to reinforce the foreign policy of the United States, not to undermine it, which appears to be the motivation behind DeMint’s trip.

The entire purpose of DeMint’s trip was to undermine the foreign policy of the United States. This would constitute a clear violation of the Logan Act, and if he does end up going through with it he should be charged. If anything the Republican Leadership should call DeMint into the office and tell him that if he goes through with his plans they will not support him. Of course that would never happen. Playing politics trumps everything else when it comes to the Republicans.