Good News – The Kinetic Military Action will be over soon
I confess I missed this, but I’m optimistic, aren’t you?
Legal authorization for Libya mission set to expire in 10 days:
That’s according to the War Powers Act, which, you may remember, the White House apparently has no intention of abiding by.
Someone, be it the ACLU, a peace group, or maybe even Rand Paul, is going to file suit if we pass the 60-day deadline without congressional authorization. So there’s the silver lining in this dubious executive move: At last, the War Powers Act will be tested in court.
Some folks have already discovered that using air power alone is rife with questions. Who’d a thunk it? Those nasty bad guys, damn them for figuring out a way to hide.
In a few days there will be a dance beginning in DC… grab the popcorn.
Category: Politics
Bagging bin Laden might just offer the political capital Obama needs to keep this off the floor.
NSOM #1:
I’m not so sure? You may right, of course, we’ll see. A kind of an interesting benchmark is in play.
Be interesting. I, like every president since the WPA was enacted feel the War Powers Act is unconstituional. We shall see if the Big 0 will call congress’s bluff.
It’s a myth that air power alone doesn’t work.
Air power alone can work just fine. We only need to drop an enormous number of nukes.
So far, we’ve seen the POTUS’s stance has been to ignore Congress and the courts at every turn. What’s a measly law compared to the urge to get another bump in his polling numbers?
Okay, so a little update might be needed here.
First, Hillary Clinton told Congress that the Obama administration has no intention of following through with the dictates of the War Powers Resolution. She even went so far as to say that if Congress passed legislation constraining the mission, that legislation would be ignored. In other words, Obama doesn’t care what Congress has to say when it comes to war making authority.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/clinton-tells-house-obama-would-ignore-war-resolutions.php
Then, Obama met with the Secretary General of NATO and agreed to extend the operation.
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/161165-obama-un-chief-agree-to-continue-strikes-on-libya
Now, the Obama administration has retreated a bit on the War Powers Resolution. They intend to come up with some new and novel legal theory to justify their continuing the action, without Congressional approval, past the 60 day deadline.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/world/africa/13powers.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
This ride won’t be over anytime soon.
In other related news, the origin of the phrase “L’État, c’est moi” has been cleared up by historians. It was not, in fact, first spoken by Louis XIV. That phrase was first uttered by Barack Obama.