On the April 9 edition of MSNBC's Countdown, host Keith Olbermann awarded Robert F. Turner, a University of Virginia School of Law professor, “the silver” in his nightly “Worst Person in the World” segment for asserting, in an April 6 Wall Street Journal op-ed, that House “Speaker Nancy Pelosi [D-CA] might have violated a federal criminal law by going to Syria to meet with [Syrian] President [Bashar Al-] Assad,” as Olbermann put it. Turner claimed Pelosi “may well have” violated the 200-year-old Logan Act even though, as Media Matters for America noted, a 1975 State Department opinion applying the act, stated, “Nothing in [the Logan Act, U.S. Code Title 18,]

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000-.html">section 953, however, would appear to restrict members of the Congress from engaging in discussions with foreign officials in pursuance of their legislative duties under the Constitution." As Media Matters noted, Pelosi has said that her trip was well within those duties.

From the April 9 edition of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann:

OLBERMANN: The silver to Robert F. Turner. He's a former acting assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs in the Reagan administration, wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal editorial page, which has been even more hysterical than usual lately, which suggested Speaker Nancy Pelosi might have violated a federal criminal law by going to Syria to meet with President Assad, even though the law he mentioned, the Logan Act, was specifically ruled by the State Department to have nothing to do with members of Congress, quote, “engaging in discussions with foreign officials in pursuance of their legislative duties.”

Former acting assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs in the Reagan administration -- you mean you were a temp.