HoltesThoughts

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

What is One Voice, Who is Tom Cotton? And what game are they playing?

Tom Cotton, Best Congressmen Money can buy?

When I was writing my post on the Logan Amendment and the 47 Traitors Post last week I came on a number of interesting facts which seemed irrelevant when I wrote the post, so I put the info at the bottom of the post. Later I found out that they were incredibly related to Cottons vote, because:

Updating 3/16/2015. It turns out that Tom Cotton got $960,250 in supportive campaign advertising in the last month of his Senate Campaign (November 2014) (See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/03/israel-fingerprints-republican)

Why these negotiations are important:: http://journal.georgetown.edu/irans-nuclear-negotiations-assessing-the-anomaly-of-success/
Senate Authority: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/mar/11/tom-cotton/letter-iran-47-republican-senators-correct-about-c/
Tom Cotton:: Eli Clifton: http://www.lobelog.com/exclusive-emergency-committee-for-israel-spends-big-on-rep-tom-cotton/; Open Secrets Article on him [https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00033363]; http://mondoweiss.net/2015/03/israel-fingerprints-republican
Iraqis intercept supplies headed to ISIL: http://www.wnd.com/2015/03/iraqis-find-saudi-supplies-weapons-destined-for-isis/; http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/03/logan-amendment-and-47-traitors.html

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) and Joining the Nuclear Club

Watching the playground bullies in the Republican party attack our Presidents efforts to negotiate with Iran, just ups the stakes for our world's survival. The war-mongers deliberately distort the issues and the stakes. I think that is because they take the "Mad" part of Nukes more seriously than they understand the insanity of "mutually assured destruction".

Understanding the Insanity of Imperialist efforts at Arms control

In the 30's, the Germans pioneered Nuclear Science. Fortunately for the rest of the world (and unfortunately for the scientists) the leading German Physicists were mostly Jewish or socially liberal enough to be best buddies and friends with Jewish Scientists. This led the Germans to ignore or fail to appreciate the potential power of Nuclear Energy as a weapon. Even so the Germans pioneered refining Uranium, discovered Plutonium, and might have produced a bomb in time to use it against the Brits, French and Russians had it not been for the fact that:

a; the Nazis arrested or exiled most of their leading Physics geniuses. And; b; the remaining German Scientists seem to have either deliberately stalled the program, or took it down a wrong path.; (quoting from this source for convenience): http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p11.htm
Further reading:: http://www.history.ucsb.edu/projects/holocaust/Research/Proseminar/johnamacher.htm; (quoting from this source for convenience): http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p11.htm
Patton on the Russians: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-orlando/the-foresight-of-patton/

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Inductive, Deductive Processes Democracy and Good government

Using Process to restore integrity to the system.

There are two main forms of reasoning. Inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. To use them well they need to be incorporated into processes, formalized into institutions and then employed.

What is a Deductive Reasoning

At the risk of oversimplifying, deductive processes use deductive reasoning:

"Deductive reasoning is a logical process in which a conclusion is based on the concordance of multiple premises that are generally assumed to be true."

What are the risks of Deductive Reasoning?

Deductive reasoning frequently results in formal fallacies (due to misapplication of logic) and in fallacies due to faulty premises. Thus for deductive reasoning to be refined and validated the premises of the deduction have to be tested.

Deductive Process

Thus a Deductive Process needs to things, one is that it's formal logic be defined (and modeled) to identify "formal fallacies" and avoid conclusions that don't follow their premises and faulty premises. Then even if the logic seems to be unassailable the premises still have to be examined. Deductive process works through an iterative process of detailing from abstract theory.

[http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/dedind.php]

Inductive reasoning and Inductive process

Inductive reasoning:

" Inductive reasoning makes broad generalizations from specific observations."

This article explains it better than most:

"Inductive reasoning works the other way, moving from specific observations to broader generalizations and theories. Informally, we sometimes call this a "bottom up" approach (please note that it's "bottom up" and not "bottoms up" which is the kind of thing the bartender says to customers when he's trying to close for the night!). In inductive reasoning, we begin with specific observations and measures, begin to detect patterns and regularities, formulate some tentative hypotheses that we can explore, and finally end up developing some general conclusions or theories." [http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/dedind.php]

Induction and Deduction must be used together

Some people like to pit inductive reasoning against deductive reasoning as if one method were superior to the other. But both are necessary to process success. And both kinds of reasonings have risks. Abstract theories are generalized from observations, experimentation and sometimes inspiration based on those. There is no deduction without induction. One can come up with faulty theories even if the theory seems to explain the observations. There is no science without verification, validation and refinement processes

Scientists of the Euro-American Gold age got around the dangers of logical trap fallacies by using extensive experimentation and testing to verify, refine and validate hypothesii. As we've moved into a more gilded age, even some of the process improvement people have forgotten about the role of "refining" models. There is a rush to get them to the market as fast as possible, that just doesn't work. Even as hucksters continue to talk about Verification and Validation, while the feedback loop is still drawn, it's not in their minds. In the rush to move science to production the role of experimentation in refining efforts gets forgotten. Experimentation isn't just for verification and validation. It is also for refining the requirements for functionality, and refining one's understanding of what one is looking at. A lot has been dumped in the privateering rush to privatize science and try to make riches. Good process has been one of them. The reason that practical engineers did extensive testing is that science is built on failure. And it's not right to test concepts with train wrecks using live Guinea Pigs. That was a lesson learned through many train wrecks in the early days of train building.

Deductive reasoning has to be tested through inductive processes. And inductive processes are the source for general principles and lessons needed to make progress. The moment a new idea comes along, if the idea contradicts some established theory it tends to get rejected unless there is testing and validation and some "bottom up" means to bring the idea to the attention of the theoreticians.

Governing as the use of Inductive and Deductive processes in Concert.

In requirements we talk about "Bottom up" and "top down." Good requirements has both bottom up inductive processes and top down deductive processes. Requirements have to be fleshed out using engineering principles and iterative experimentation. I want a vehicle for getting from one continent to another. How do I do it? I can do it over the ocean in a boat. But there are constraints on the speed of a boat. The concept may be top down, but now we have a process of discovery. It took 400+ years of failure and experimentation to get boats that could travel at top speeds greater than 10 knots. At 10 knots Europe ruled the world, But ships have never been good at mastering more than 30 knots safely.

But now I want my trip to be fast. For faster speeds you need something that can move over oceans through the air. That is called flying. How do you make something fly? Observation suggested we could do it with wings like birds. It took 1400 years before anyone could figure out how to do that successfully and demonstrate it. It took 50 years before flying was safe. Years of failure and experimentation. My Grandfather perished in 1938 while flying a PB-Y. He was a Pilot, so between the inherent dangers of flying an immature technology and the looming Great War, his odds were 50/50 of making it 5 years after he graduated the Academy. For space shuttle pilots the odds were a little better. That they only had two catastrophic failures showed that they took risk seriously. Risk is part of life. The purpose of science is to use tools that can keep one eye open when humans/sentient beings are walking the cliffs and valleys that make it up.

Process models understand this. They build Deductive process models and Inductive process models, and they use both. These models are useful for trying to understand and predict behaviors. Scientists are trying to use create artificial intelligence using deductive and inductive models. I'd like to see them used for improving the natural intelligence of our governing processes and society. Seeking artificial intelligence is kind of useless unless it is part of improving our own intelligence. Some people are so frustrated with the messy, poor processes they live with they concentrate on building AIs in ivory towers. We fear "Skynet" because we know there is something wrong with our use of intelligence.

We need to use Deductive Processes and Inductive Processes to systematically govern ourselves as societies and a world.

Good Government as acknowledging the value of and employing both Inductive and Deductive Processes.

It hit me a long time ago (before 2010) that the value of Enlightened ideas is is in enlightened processes and enlightened requirements and constraints. If the AI and process people could design an ideal government Democracy probably wouldn't come to mind first, but if they were tasked to apply the principles of Inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning to a business process model for governing a society using these principles -- they'd come up with a Democratic system. This is because top down processes are faulty without verification, validation and refining processes -- Inductive process. And Bottom up processes are faulty without generalization, standardization and requirements. Which are deductive processes.

Democratic representation is (or should be) an inductive process. Local Direct Democracy is in your general assemblies, in accepting feedback from workers. In letting them choose representatives. Workers are your best testers and validators for concept. Oppressive and tyrannical process is also bad and dysfunctional process. Good representation hears all voices because the best way to avoid conflict is to find out what issues are and solve them, rather than exploiting them for pyramid games. The point is that a functional Representative Republic is also good governing process that employs inductive and deductive products to feedback for success.

Boss types want to believe their general theories are valid "a priori" but in real life most governing theory rests on shifting sand. What works strategically at one moment may fail as conditions react to that strategy. Thus good government requires continual feedback, and sometimes a changing of the guard. But for now:

More to come

Notes

Process improvement people have been looking at the processes of management for some time. And it hit me during a very boring (because I was being lectured on a subject I'd already studied ad nauseum) training session on process improvement that I hadn't seen much of that applied to governing. So I started looking at the subject, all the while hoping that I'd find some thinker who'd already covered parts of it so I wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel. By looking at the process of government as a system with a series of processes that need to be systematized. One can apply the process improvement ideas of the Golden Age of Euro-American Science to Government. For example, when looking at the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist papers, and other philosophical writings of the 18th century and early 19th century the philosophers and "social-scientists" were grasping at engineering models that would use tools not that different from the process diagrams used to describe requirements, or airplane acquisition, etc... Consequently I've been consciously and subconsciously at work on this since 2010. But the first step was to re-read the writings with that in mind. I found some of the concepts I was looking for in Artificial Intelligence thinking, which is mostly the product of engineers trying to architect the ideas of some brilliant science fiction writers and scientists, so it shouldn't be surprising.

Friday, March 13, 2015

Private Tyranny, Property Rights and Workman's compensation

Before Workman's compensation

[100 yrs article]

The Story

The story I heard a long time ago, is one I'm still in the process of verifying. The story I was told is that my Great Grandfather was an Iron worker. One of the jobs he had, I heard was building an Iron Dome in the Minnesota State Capital. I thought I heard the Iron dome was on the capital, but I looked it but the Minnesota State capital building is made of Marble, so that part of the story I must have heard wrong. Maybe it was a bank or some other building. I need to dig. Or he was doing other work than just Iron work. Or perhaps Iron helped support the Marble. I don't know. But the story I heard, I think from my Grandfather is that after a number of years as a pretty good Iron worker he hurt his back while working. At that point he was fired. His pay was docked for lost time and the cost of the Medical Doctor and he was sent home. He spent the rest of his life barely making a living with a small farm.

The story of Workman's Compensation in brief

He raised my Grandmother under incredibly difficult circumstances. According to the story she would skate to work in the winter and walk three miles to school around a lake the rest of the year. I know this is true. His daughter, my Grandmother, was a tiny, delicate, fearful, yet tough and determined woman, though obviously she'd suffered privation and it had marked her. She became a School teacher and helped my Grandfather get his degree so he could teach high school and coach sports. My Late wife always made me think of her.

Also according to the story my Grandfather was a bit of a socialist/progressive after that, though much of my family tends to be hyper-patriotic and even Right Wing. I do know he was in pain for the rest of his life and eeking out a living running a small farm he bought with his savings. I never met my Great Grandfather La Ducre, and my time with my Grandfather and Grandmother was brief, so my memory could be faulty on this. But the essential story is pretty typical of the days before Workman's compensation, which we only got because of labor agitation for fairness. It was typical for employers to treat workers as a cost and for employers to treat their common employees like dirt. If the story is not true, it is still typical of the days before Workmen's compensation.

Fairness in the United States has two different definitions. For those who have land and capital property it involves an absolute right to use their property as they see fit. That attitude is alive and well, as demonstrated by the recent demonstrations at the Mall of America. The Mall of America corporation regards their malls as private property. Even if they seem like public places, the notion of a "commons" is something they resist. They hired police, FBI and Homeland Security to enforce that notion. It is the same notion that informed the Aristocrats of old. Prior to the passage of workmans compensation laws, employers were the same way. Employees were an expense only. The land they worked on was private property. If they were unfortunate enough to live on the Corporation private property, they had no rights. That is why we developed a Union movement. The notion of "commons" went out the window when we created corporations. The reality that the commons has always applied to property claimed as "private" doesn't occur to modern "economic royalists" (FDR's term) anymore than it applied to the Nobles and Kings who declared they had a divine right of kings to rule arbitrarily and discard the detritus; (old, sick, infirm, hurt). For that reason it took years of agitating to get our Workman's compensation laws.

....And now they are under attack again!

This article explains the Workers Compensation System:

"Today's workers compensation system can trace its original heritage back to a German system put in place in 1881; however, 1911 is recognized as when Wisconsin adopted the first statewide constitutional workers compensation law. It was a simple program that removed worker injuries from the court system, offering both employers and employees more certainty about compensation for lost wages, disabilities and medical care." [https://www.ncci.com/documents/100_yrs_comp.pdf]

The article softpedals the harsh reality of the previous system. Unless the Employer did something egregious and the courts were not corrupt (courts were notoriously biased against workers and for employers), workers not only were unlikely to get any help for being injured at work, they were likely to be sued for the financial damage their injury did to their employer and successfully!

"When it was first introduced a century ago, workers compensation insurance was a relatively radical idea for American workplaces." [100 yrs article]

Radical is code for "No effing way I'm going to compensate my employees for being lazy shiftless morons who get themselves hurt" was a typical (still is) attitude of employers! It took the Union movement and labor agitating to get this done! It was fiendishly difficult to sue an employer. And even if one won the case it was rare that a worker was well compensated!

"As the American economy moved increasingly from agriculture-based to industry-based, it became increasingly necessary to find a comprehensive method for dealing with the costs of on-the-job injuries. States realized that employees could not be expected to have to sue their employers for compensation. And employers needed to have a means for protecting themselves from the unknown costs of such lawsuits." [100 yrs article]

Pirate Model

More importantly workers realized that employers were not going to compensate workers unless a system was demanded that the employers could live with. The system they came up with was modeled on the system worked out by pirates back in the days when privateers and pirates hunted for prizes and fought wars on the open ocean. In those days a no-fault system was setup for compensating injured crew on pirate ships. This no-fault system was eventually adopted by the elitist Navies, but only after labor agitation by sailors. The threat of mutiny eventually worked, but only after generations of sailors were hung.

And it took til 1948 to get Workman's Compensation laws passed in every state!

[http://www.piratesinfo.com/cpi_Injury_Compensation_537.asp]

Sources and Further Reading

https://www.ncci.com/documents/100_yrs_comp.pdf

http://www.piratesinfo.com/cpi_Injury_Compensation_537.asp

Oh Jesus

Mythical, legendary man; Whose sandals still leave footprints in the sand.; that none can perfectly follow;; ...or perfectly understand.
Oh Jesus;: How the charlatans have played with your story;; turned you into Apollo, son of Zeus, even Ba'al Peor, Shamash; turned you into Logos, God's "spirit",; God's right hand man,; an angel at last.; The Charlatans have armed you with an AK 47; Put words in your mouth you never said.; Turned you into a blond, blue eyed, crusading madman; turned your teachings on their head.
Oh barefoot itinerate wandering preacher!: And people who follow those footprints,; the more their feet fit the holes; the more they are hated and vilified; and beaten on their souls
Oh Rebbe Jeshua!: In your name your brothers have been murdered by the millions; Driven from town to town, driven into cattle cars.; In your name they murder your relatives and their sons.; Vilified and demonized, beaten and demeaned.; Even the graves desecrated.
Oh Jesus!: And those who would follow your path;; Walk thinly clothed and barefoot; healing the sick and feeding their brothers and sisters.; Walking with murderers and whores,; Alcoholics and bores.; Bothering good Christians at their front doors; and getting killed by them!
Oh Jesus!: I suspect the Messiah walks among us!; He's: in the nurses at the Hospital,; the Fireman running into the fire,; He's a she, a he-she, a Man, a Woman,; The Messiah awaits the time,; When hypocrisy will no longer be.
Oh Jesus!: If you walk among us this day; There is a burning cross they'd hang you on!; The Reincarnations of Pharisees,; Sit in the front in the most comfortable Pews; Or preach anti-semitism on the pulpit.
Oh Son of David!: The world eternally waits for salvation.; Christopher H. Holte, 3/13/2015

Background.

Timeline: The story of Jesus is set approximately AD 32 or so. Paul of Tarsis' time line is circa 5 AD to 67 AD and he dies in Rome while Jews were in the process of doing the revolt they believed the Messiach, who Christians identify with Jesus, was supposed to lead. Paul is semi historical in that his writings survive, heavily edited. Jesus is both mythological and legendary as his stories went through a period of oral transmission, the testaments were also heavily edited (and as we find from Gnostic survivals were culled together theologically from diverse sources). The Jewish Revolt was from 66 AD to 73 AD. Paul's dramatic visit to the Temple where his disciple Timothy was stoned because the Temple Goers were under the impression he was ritually impure and not circumcised marks the break between Paul's line of Christianity and a Jewish line. The Jewish revolt would have welcomed a second coming. In the myth that precedes Jesus the Messiach is supposed to be from the Line of David, is supposed to do miracles, and one of those miracles is to save Israel from the Romans. By taking Christianity to Greek Cities and Romans and freeing Christians from practicing Kosher (the "old law") preachers like Paul were asserting that Christian teachings were a new Law that would be superior and easier to practice than the old one. Thus the fight was between Christians like Peter and Jesus' brother James, who believed that Jesus was for Jews, would be returning to defeat the Romans literally, and those who were grasping for a "new law." But in any Case honest historians and theologians admit that from [http://www.ucg.org/booklet/god-trinity/surprising-origins-trinity-doctrine]

The idea of him being "divine" was acceptable to most Jews. The idea of him being "God" or "a God" was not. A person can be a receptacle (behave so closely to the desired virtue that one's name becomes the word for it) or example of an abstract thing, but not literally that thing. But all this happened over time and not in writing.

"For fifty years after St. Paul's life a curtain hangs over the church, through which we strive vainly to look; and when at last it rises, about 120 A.D. with the writings of the earliest church fathers, we find a church in many aspects very different from that in the days of St. Peter and St. Paul" ( The Story of the Christian Church, 1970, p. 33)."

That intervening time was marked by the first Revolt(66-73 AD), and the Kitos Revolt (115–117), which depopulated Christian as well as Jewish communities. It is a period of oral transmission and of transmissions whose originals have been lost or altered. And so the "earliest Church fathers" rise in a Church that was divorced from it's Jewish origins for the most part. Indeed it was so divorced that folks who took the "Old Testament" seriously were persecuted as "Judaizers." In any case, that persecution also became the process of Christians taking up the anti-Semitic mantle of the Romans and Greeks.

And by the council of Nicea, Jesus had become identified with ancient pagan Gods, the very Greek and pre-Christian idea of God-head, and so notions like that of Arianus were considered heretical (Arianus):

"Arius, a priest from Alexandria, Egypt, taught that Christ, because He was the Son of God, must have had a beginning and therefore was a special creation of God. Further, if Jesus was the Son, the Father of necessity must be older."

Their solution was to identify Jesus with the Logos, or "divine word", the first creation of God, and to turn the whole concept of the Trinity into an esoteric mythical doctrine:

"as Karen Armstrong explains, "the Trinity only made sense as a mystical or spiritual experience . . . It was not a logical or intellectual formulation but an imaginative paradigm that confounded reason. Gregory of Nazianzus made this clear when he explained that contemplation of the Three in One induced a profound and overwhelming emotion that confounded thought and intellectual clarity." [http://www.ucg.org/booklet/god-trinity/surprising-origins-trinity-doctrine/]>

Now mysticism is based on the kind of meditation and illumination that is the origins of religion and really great literature. It usually IS in the form of dream or mythic language. Indeed the "holy spirit" is related to the Jewish concept of the Shekhinah and Kaballist and mystery religion concepts that are as much part of psychic, spiritual and "brain matter" reality, but are not usually logical paradigms. There is a logic, but the logic is more related to the wet hemisphere's inside our heads than the material world around us.

"'No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendor of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Three than I am carried back into the One. When I think of any of the Three, I think of him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me'" (p. 117). Little wonder that, as Armstrong concludes, "For many Western Christians . . . the Trinity is simply baffling" (ibid.)." [http://www.ucg.org/booklet/god-trinity/surprising-origins-trinity-doctrine/]>

Christianity was an uneasy alliance of folks intellectualizing the concept of God, folks using the writings about the subject to guide and teach in parables and analogy, folks wrestling with the concepts to try to make sense of them and come to truths about their own lives and help others in the process, and ecstatic, meditative/contemplative, visionary illuminations. Just as most great religions are, and as the parent religions; paganism and Judaism are also.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Sweet Sweat

For a Married friend:

life is sweet sweat when you're wife is happy,

When she's unhappy it's kind of crappy.

When she's around she can get on your nerves,

but when she's not you miss her a lot.

Still Broken But Mending

My heart is still broken, but mending,

Life has chores I'm still tending.

The sun when it shines,

reminds me why I'm alive.

My heart is still broken, but mending

Christopher H. Holte, 3/12/2015

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Logan Amendment and the 47 Traitors

When Boehner invited Netanyahu without consulting the President, he was violating the Logan Act then, and I wrote about it and how he was violating it. And said so:

McCain also violated the Logan act a few years ago when he went to Syria and put pressure on Prince Bandar to fund radical Islamicists to fight Syria's Hafez Assad. I said so then, and wondered why he wasn't prosecuted. He was subverting and undermining USA efforts to both bring about positive change in Syria and stop Al Qaeda and ISIL, and here was McCain praising the leadership of Al Qaeda. McCain would rather forget that now, but it's pretty obvious that his primary target has been Shia Muslims over Sunna Muslims. One wonders why that? The answer is with Saudi Arabia and it's unconstitutional purchases of US politicians, but that is another story. The point is that the GOP has been regularly subverting and sabotaging US foreign policy since Obama was elected. It turns out they were doing so in secret going back to when Nixon subverted the Paris Peace talks with North Vietnam in 1968 so he could get elected, and Reagan's backers did the same thing with Jimmy Carter's hostage negotiations. Subversion and sabotage are part of the GOP repertoire of dirty tricks.

So this "#47Traitors letter" is really only the latest in a long history of sabotage, sedition and subversion. It's text goes as follows:

"It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system. Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our Constitution—the power to make binding international agreements and the different character of federal offices—which you should seriously consider as negotiations progress." Letter: [http://www.cotton.senate.gov/content/cotton-and-46-fellow-senators-send-open-letter-leaders-islamic-republic-iran]

Now the Constitution gives the President the power to make treaties and execute executive power:

"He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties"

Clearly the Senate has the right to make input into this process, though from even a strict reading of the text this is the President's job not theirs. The Senate has created laws that the President operates under. And in this case the President is acting under the UN Charter. Indeed these negotiations were started by France, Germany and the United Kingdom, and China, Russia, and the United States, joined in later. So the negotiations are under the UN Charter which we ratified as a Treaty years ago. The President and the United States are one party to that discussion. [http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Iran_Nuclear_Proposals]

And the President along with the other leaders negotiating with the Iranians are carrying out their Article 24 mission of the security council:

"In order to ensure prompt and effective action by the United Nations, its Members confer on the Security Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, and agree that in carrying out its duties under this responsibility the Security Council acts on their behalf." [http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/chapter5.shtml]

Under our security council obligations war is supposed to be a last resort not the method of choice as Tom Cotton or John McCain would have us "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" and have wanted that since 2008. So in this case, we already have a law governing the negotiations with Iran, and the President already has treaty obligations under which he is negotiating. If the Security council ratifies the results then the only way the Senate makes any sense in torpedoing the treaty is if it is ready to abrogate it's membership in the Security Council and the UN. So while, any negotiation here might be wise to be presented to Congress. It's a Security Council matter.So while;

"First, under our Constitution, while the president negotiates international agreements, Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them. In the case of a treaty, the Senate must ratify it by a two-thirds vote. A so-called congressional-executive agreement requires a majority vote in both the House and the Senate (which, because of procedural rules, effectively means a three-fifths vote in the Senate). Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement." [Cotton's letter cont...]

In reality under our constitution the following also holds true:

"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." [Constitution: Article 6]

So the President, under the UN treaty, already has the authority to negotiate Arms agreements as part of his UN Role. At least until we withdraw from the UN. Which is why I suppose John Bolton long ago wanted to blow up the building in New York.

But the subversive characteristic of this letter is obvious in the next paragraph:

"Second, the offices of our Constitution have different characteristics. For example, the president may serve only two 4-year terms, whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms. As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then—perhaps decades." [Cotton's letter continued]

Maybe the USA could back out of any agreement with the UN in the future, but that would be a world disaster and the end of our country as a functional republic. Besides, the other 5 countries and the UN have a say in this matter too. I suppose Cotton is thinking of his future as Fuehrer of the United States here, but really, do we want to back out of the UN that we created and use naked aggression against the Iranians? What the Right has been saying about Iran is not only exaggerated but much of it is untrue. The Iranians, in fact, are currently helping Iraq deal with ISIL, while the Saudis are still playing both sides with Islamic extremism [See Further reading Iraqi's intercept supplies].

"What these two constitutional provisions mean is that 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. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time." [Cotton's letter cont...]

Cotton is not only demonstrating that he doesn't give a rats pettuty about Separation of Powers, but also that he's in the John Bolton School of International Agreements and wants the American Empire to Conquer Iran. A future congress could "with a stroke of a pen" abrogate the Constitution too. And these jokers are likely to do so to "save the constitution". Then he finishes with a Cynical flourish:

"We hope this letter enriches your knowledge of our constitutional system and promotes mutual understanding and clarity as nuclear negotiations progress." Cottons Letter: [http://www.cotton.senate.gov/content/cotton-and-46-fellow-senators-send-open-letter-leaders-islamic-republic-iran]

Sincerely,: Senator Tom Cotton, R-AR, etc...

Sadly unenforceable

I've been quoting the Logan Act because it's on the books, and clearly the GOP minority is violating it's letter and spirit with this letter to the Iranians. It's also violating the letter and spirit of our Geneva Conventions and the UN treaty.

But sadly because of the wording of the Constitution, Senators are probably the only non-executive officers who can get away with violating the Logan act. The Constitution says this about treason:

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."

Criteria for Prosecution don't fit

To be clearly a traitor under the above definition, we'd have to be in a declared war with Iran. This Senate hasn't declared war so they can't easily be arrested as traitors. On the other hand they have passed laws declaring Iran an enemy for reasons of trade, etc... and that hasn't always stopped the government before. US Citizens have been tried under laws based on "treason" before. But it does means they can claim in court that they aren't working for Israel or that we aren't at war against Iran, and that therefore they can't be arrested. So while they clearly are traitors under the ordinary, political meaning of the word. as well as "just" demagogues, figurative seditionist, subversives and saboteurs, scoundrels and louts. It would cause a constitutional crisis if we tried to arrest them, also because:

"They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place."

Which means the case would have to be awfully clear before we'd dare to even try to arrest them. Unless the charge was obviously true, the Police would have no warrant to arrest them while Congress is in session. And it almost never is out of session. Maybe that is the reason.

But I doubt any of these seditionist traitors, subversives, scoundrels and saboteurs will ever go to jail. Though I hope the American people learn to see through this nonsense and throw them out of office in proximate elections.

Best Congressman Money can buy

Ironically the name "47 Traitors" makes me think of the 47 Ronin, who at least really had been wronged in Japan. Their example has been invoked in other melees as folks willing to go down for a faulty cause.

And of course Tom Cotton seems to be giving his quid pro quo return to Bill Kristol's donation in November 2014

[http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/02/16/boehner-confesses-i-invited-netanyahu-secretly-to-stab-president-obama-in-the-back-and-sabotage-peace-talks-video/]

So they also are guilty of other unconstitutional behaviors. By accepting money, essentially from the State of Israel, Cotton appears to be violating the spirit, if not the letter, of this provision:

..."no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince or foreign State."

This provision of the constitution pretty much says that "campaign contributions" that come from Israel are unconstitutional.

Open Secrets Top 5 Donors 2013-2014 + last Minute
Contributor	Total	Indivs	PACs
Club for Growth	$507,174	$507,174	$0
Elliott Management	$143,100	$143,100	$0
Stephens Group	$105,550	$95,550	$10,000
Senate Conservatives Fund	$97,427	$92,427	$5,000
Goldman Sachs	$50,549	$40,549	$10,000
Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI)	$960,250
When we talk about Elliott Management we are really talking about Paul Singer.
https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00033363
Mondoweiss: [http://mondoweiss.net/2015/03/israel-fingerprints-republican]

Name	Amount per Gift	Total
4 members of the vastly wealthy Falic family	$11,500	$46,000
Book family of New Jersey	$11,000	$44,000
Schottenstein family	$10,000	$40,000

Open Secrets Top 5 Donors 2013-2014
Contributor	Total	Indivs	PACs
Club for Growth	$507,174	$507,174	$0
Elliott Management	$143,100	$143,100	$0
Stephens Group	$105,550	$95,550	$10,000
Senate Conservatives Fund	$97,427	$92,427	$5,000
Goldman Sachs	$50,549	$40,549	$10,000
When we talk about Elliott Management we are really talking about Paul Singer.
https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00033363