Since 1799, the United States has had on its books of law a little piece of Congressional piquery called The Logan Act.
Any citizen of the United States wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or any agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or any official or agent thereof, in relations to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined not more than $5000 or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
The act is named for a man named George Logan, a Quaker physician and friend of Thomas Jefferson, who took it upon himself in 1798 to travel to France to secure an accord with the United States. Note that he had no authority whatsoever to conduct foreign policy 🙂
The Logan Act was passed the following year by incensed Federalists (who were Anglophiles and didn’t appreciate Logan’s amateur diplomacy).
Logan, not to be deterred, seved as a US Senator from 1801-1807 and defied the law by conducting talks with England to reconcile various differences between the two countries. Now that’s interesting too, since Jefferson was president from 1801-1807 and was a confirmed Francophile 🙂
No one has ever been charged or convicted of a violation of the Logan Act, although it has been evoked many times by infuriated Americans with regard to a diverse lot of non-authorized diplomats ranging (just in recent memory) from Jesse Jackson to Henry Kissinger.
However, in view of the severity of the swinish assholishness demonstrated by Reps. Bonior and McDermott in the last couple of days vis-a-vis Iraq, I can’t think of a better first time to invoke the Act.