Why I’m suing the Obama administration over Libya - By Ron Paul

[Kuya]

Correct, the president is free to launch an attack on another country in the absence of a declaration of war.

Yes, i understand now. And my response is that this is debateable. I consider that an act of war is the same as declaring war, and if the president engages in act of war he is in fact declaring war and therefore ursurping congressional power. Otherwise, article 1, section 8 where congress is declared to have the power to declare was has no meaning, given that it is no necessary to confer constitutionality to any war, given that the president's ability to engage in acts of war are constitutional in on themselves. This makes Congress' enumarated power of war declaration comestic and useless since its very beginning.

I think you're confusing practice with constitutionality ergo legality. The president has the ability to engage in acts of war regardless of whether congress declares war or not, but this does not make the engaging and prosecuting of war constitutional. In practice, Congress no longer declares wars, but merely gives its consent directly or indirectly to the acts of war that the president may engage in. Declaring war seems redundant when an act of war already brings you into a state of war, and declaring war only implicates consent in this instance.

I think i'm going to talk with my constitutional law professor now.

[Demosthenes11]

Congress has the ability to check the power: they can impeach and they can cut off funding.

Also every 4 years the will of the people will come to bear on unpopular presidents.

(How many times has this been said?)

so the president will have to think about a new term half the time, and congress can only halt it by waiting for funds to dry up with a strong majority vote or impeach with a huge majority. Either process would take some time. How is this thread not about how the president has too much power and wields it irresponsibly again?

[aurik]

Yeah go ahead and ask him to legally define what constitutes an "act of war" while you're at it, that way you can precisely define what you think restrains the president in the absence of congressional consent.

[Cadsuane]

Kuya already point out that a congressional declaration of war has become so divorced from the actual actions and grammars of conventional modern warfare so as to become vestigial, which as an observation highlights the obsolescence of such a declaration and the very constitutional understanding of warfare, not to mention, arguably, the obsolescence of the constitution (or at least the going interpretation of it) as a normalizing force acting against the executive. That being the case, your attempt to winkingly point out the same is conceited and utterly banal.

[aurik]

So pass some new amendments to the constitution. The process exists.

[Cadsuane]

Indeed. So where's your disagreement? Both of you seem to think that the president has the authority to order the military to hostilities both in a pragmatic sense and an abstract legal sense, but Kuya's making some normative distinction here; everybody's assumption is you're taking issue with it.

[aurik]

Kuya's saying that the president's actions in re Libya is currently illegitimate without the authorization of congress as it stands now. Which is wrong.

One could certainly say that "hey the president's military actions should be under the advice and consent section, which would justify congressional oversight," but that's not the way it's set up.

And when I think about it, I *don't* want congress legislating where and when the president can act. A periodic review with an emergency removal procedure seems sufficient.

[archibaldcrane]

Has this ever not been the case though? We've only declared war 5 times in our history, and we've been in countless conflicts over the past 250 years where war was not declared. This is nothing new, I don't know why we're pretending that now the Executive branch is taking more power than it used to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declara..._United_States

[Kuya]

Kuya's saying that the president's actions in re Libya is currently illegitimate without the authorization of congress as it stands now. Which is wrong.

One could certainly say that "hey the president's military actions should be under the advice and consent section, which would justify congressional oversight," but that's not the way it's set up.

And when I think about it, I *don't* want congress legislating where and when the president can act. A periodic review with an emergency removal procedure seems sufficient.

According to the War Powers Resolution, it is illegitimate, but according to you, this law is unconstitutional. However, that's not Obama's argument, his argument is that Libya does not fall under the purview of this law.

[aurik]

And without a court to examine the question, it is unresolved. Anything else captain obvious?

[Kuya]

Oh, nothing, but i did like your implicit acceptance of my argument that there is in fact a violation of the war powers resolution act.

[aurik]

Violation of an unconstitutional or unenforceable law is a pretty meaningless statistic.

[Day]

Yeah cause that's what he's been saying.
@kuya

[Kaslo]

Can I say that the action may not be in accordance with the War Powers Act but that it may not be a violation based on whether or not whether the action is actually covered under the WPA since that's clearly debatable? Though it will never matter because a court will never hear a case based on it.

[Kuya]

Violation of an unconstitutional or unenforceable law is a pretty meaningless statistic.

Ah, then it seems Obama is using the wrong argument, or he simply does not want to argue that the WPA is unconstitutional.

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

And without a court to examine the question, it is unresolved. Anything else captain obvious?

We are not currently subjected to an ongoing attack nor an imminent threat.

[Day]

He prolly dont give a fuck since he's the president and all.

[Acturus]

He prolly dont give a fuck since he's black.

[aurik]

We are not currently subjected to an ongoing attack nor an imminent threat.

Can I get your opinion on the sum of 2 and 2 please?

[Kaslo]

Can I get your opinion on the sum of 2 and 2 please?

I'm sorry your question cannot be answered in the current format as the base is ambiguous