{"id":8510,"date":"2015-03-09T14:11:39","date_gmt":"2015-03-09T14:11:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=8510"},"modified":"2015-03-09T14:11:39","modified_gmt":"2015-03-09T14:11:39","slug":"senators-undermining-foreign-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=8510","title":{"rendered":"Senators undermining foreign policy?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>The U.S. Constitution grants the president the power to negotiate treaties with foreign leaders.<\/p>\n<p>It says nothing about members of Congress being a party to those negotiations, but does give the Senate the authority to ratify treaties.<\/p>\n<p>What, then, are 47 Republican U.S. senators doing by sending a letter to Iranian officials telling them that whatever treaty they agree to with President Obama might not be good after the president leaves office in January 2017?<\/p>\n<p>Are they injecting themselves into a negotiation that seeks to end Iran&#8217;s nuclear program? Are they interfering where they don&#8217;t belong?<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/republicans-warn-iran-against-nuclear-deal-obama-124930463.html<\/p>\n<p>It looks like it to me.<\/p>\n<p>Reuters reported: &#8220;The letter, signed by 47 U.S. senators, says Congress plays a role in ratifying international agreements and points out that Obama will leave office in January 2017, while many in Congress will remain in Washington long after that.<\/p>\n<p id=\"yui_3_16_0_1_1425909341854_873\">&#8220;&#8216;We will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei,&#8217; the letter read.<\/p>\n<p id=\"yui_3_16_0_1_1425909341854_875\">&#8220;&#8216;The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of an agreement at any time,&#8217; it read.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>My initial question is this: Do these senators think the Iranians are unaware of how treaties get ratified in this country? I think I&#8217;ll answer that one: If they <em>do<\/em> believe such a thing, they&#8217;re not as smart as they think they are.<\/p>\n<p>Another issue looms, though. It is this notion that members of one party comprising the U.S. Senate can actually influence the course of a sensitive negotiation that is taking place between the executive branch of the U.S. government and the leaders of a foreign nation &#8212; and a <em>hostile<\/em> one at that.<\/p>\n<p>Such meddling shouldn&#8217;t occur.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. Constitution grants the president the power to negotiate treaties with foreign leaders. It says nothing about members of Congress being a party to those negotiations, but does give the Senate the authority to ratify treaties. What, then, are 47 Republican U.S. senators doing by sending a letter to Iranian officials telling them that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=8510\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Senators undermining foreign policy?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[540,2319,3925,4954,4980,5246],"class_list":["post-8510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-iran-nukes","tag-reuters","tag-u-s-constitution","tag-u-s-senate","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}