Another first for Nancy Pelosi?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is already assured a place in history as the first woman to become Speaker of the House. Now some people want her also to become the first person ever prosecuted under the Logan Act of 1799.

The law is named after a man who, during the "Quasi-War" with France from 1798 to 1800, saw that official U.S. foreign policy channels were not producing much result and decided to see what he could do as a private citizen to negotiate an end to the hostilities. A Congressional Research Service report published in February 2006 explains the Act as follows:

The Logan Act was intended to prohibit United States citizens without authority from interfering in relations between the United States and foreign governments. There appear to have been no prosecutions under the Act in its more than 200 year history. However, there have been a number of judicial references to the Act, and it is not uncommon for it to be used as a point of challenge concerning dealings with foreign officials.

Speaker Pelosi overreached both her authority and her capabilities when she used her visits to Israel and Syria as an occasion to try and broker some sort of dialogue between the two countries. She has found herself discredited as a result.

But the Speaker's visit to Syria, in and of itself, was not harmful to U.S. foreign policy interests, and prosecuting her under this act is not the proper response for the Bush administration.