BEIRUT — U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi came under fierce crit­i­cism from the White House for her pro­posed trip to Syria tomor­row, but, oddly, a Repub­li­can con­gres­sional del­e­ga­tion yes­ter­day to Syria was given a free pass by the same White House.
As Dana Perino, White House spokes­woman, “said”:http://newsblaze.com/story/20070331153944tsop.nb/newsblaze/TOPSTORY/Top-Stories.html:

I do think that, as a gen­eral rule — and this would go for Speaker of the House Pelosi and this appar­ent trip that she is going to be tak­ing — that we don’t think it’s a good idea. We think that some­one should take a step back and think about the mes­sage that it sends, and the mes­sage that it sends to our allies. I’m not sure what the hopes are to — what she’s hop­ing to accom­plish there. I know that Assad prob­a­bly really wants peo­ple to come and have a photo oppor­tu­nity and have tea with him, and have dis­cus­sions about where they’re com­ing from, but we do think that’s a really bad idea.

Fair enough. But Reps. Robert Ader­holt, R-Ala., Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Joe Pitts, R-Penn., “met with Syr­ian Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad on Sunday.”:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2007/04/02/international/i083853D66.DTL&type=printable
The Repub­li­cans released a state­ment that said, “We came because we believe there is an oppor­tu­nity for dia­logue … We are fol­low­ing in the lead of Ronald Rea­gan, who reached out to the Sovi­ets dur­ing the Cold War.“
_Quelle horreur!_ Dia­logue? Crick­ets were the only response from the White House.
Again in fair­ness, I spoke with a source at a West­ern embassy in Beirut about this, and the source said the Repub­li­cans had been dis­cour­aged from going, just as Pelosi and her del­e­ga­tion had been. But, the source said, if a Con­gres­sional del­e­ga­tion is deter­mined to go to Dam­as­cus, the U.S. embassy in Beirut would help them out. (He asked for anonymity because he’s not autho­rized to talk to the press — he also com­mit­ted the unpar­don­able sin of call­ing Con­gress a “co-equal branch of gov­ern­ment.”)
Pelosi is the high­est U.S. offi­cial to visit Syria since Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton in the mid-1990s.