President 'becoming an absolute monarch' on war powers, Dem says
By Pete Kasperowicz - 06/24/11 09:56 AM ET

A House Democrat warned Friday that the U.S. president is becoming an "absolute monarch" on matters related to the authority to start a war.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said Congress must act to limit funding for military operations in Libya in order to correct that trend.

"We have been sliding for 70 years to a situation where Congress has nothing to do with the decision about whether to go to war or not, and the president is becoming an absolute monarch," Nadler said on the floor. "And we must put a stop to that right now, if we don't want to become an empire instead of a republic."

Nadler stressed that he is not talking exclusively about "this president," meaning President Obama. But he said nonetheless that Congress needs to reassert its authority to declare war, and said this should be done even over concerns that it would damage U.S. credibility with its NATO allies.

"I think that the nation's credibility, that is to say its promise to go to war as backed by the president, not by the Congress, ought to be damaged," he said.

"And if foreign countries learn that they cannot depend on American military intervention unless Congress is aboard for the ride, good," he added. "That's a good thing."


Members of the House early Friday morning were debating a rule allowing for consideration of H.J.Res. 68, which would authorize continued operations in Libya, and H.R. 2278, which would limit funding for those operations.

Members of Congress have been clashing with the White House over the Libya mission. Many Republicans and some Democrats argue that President Obama does not have the authority to continue involving the U.S. in the NATO-led mission without congressional authorization.

The White House argues the U.S. role in Libya does not constitute "hostilities" and is therefore not covered under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which requires the president to seek authorization from Congress 60 days after notifying lawmakers of a military action.

H.R. 2278 is seen as tough and is expected to pass. However, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) stressed repeatedly that the exceptions in H.R. 2278 would essentially allow the U.S. military to continue the operations it is already involved in, and recommended a vote against both bills.


http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/168315-house-dem-says-president-becoming-an-absolute-monarch-on-war-powers 

It's nice to see DMV align with nadler.

I could wile away the hours
Conferrin' with the flowers
Consultin' with the rain
And my head I'd be scratchin'
While my thoughts were busy hatchin' . . . . .

Even the Dems are peeling off.

Have not checked the news.... so the bill passed?

Yeah..we know...if YOU only had a brain.

You're not in Kansas anymore!

“With the thought you’d be thinkn’
You could be another Lincoln . . . . .”

Well – may be not you.
I mean having to free the slaves and all.
Not your style I don’t expect.

Are you calling him a Democrat?!

Why he IS calling me a Democrat!

Now, I've voted for a few of them in my life but they're the kinda men that separated themselves from the pack...Men like Bob Graham and Lawton Chiles but you bought and paid for lefties don't want to hear that. Noooes...gotta be all right...well, ok...I'll be right and well they can be all WRONG!!!!

Good luck with your alphabet soup voting.

“ . . . I wouldn’t be a nothin’, my head all full of stuffin’,
My heart all full of pain.
I would dance and be merry, life would be a ding-a-derry,
If I only had a brain.
😄

Now, the world don't move to the beat of just one drum,
What might be right for you, may not be right for some.
A man is born, he's a man of means.
Then along come two, they got nothing but their jeans.

Bassard now I got watchu talkin bout stuck in my head

You take the good, you take the bad,
you take them both and there you have
The Facts of Life, the Facts of Life.
There's a time you got to go and show
You're growin' now you know about
The Facts of Life, the Facts of Life.
When the world never seems
to be livin up to your dreams
And suddenly you're finding out
the Facts of Life are all about you, you.
It takes a lot to get 'em right
When you're learning the Facts of Life. (learning the Facts of Life)
Learning the Facts of Life (learning the Facts of Life)
Learning the Facts of Life.

Your diaper is full and you stink!

Obama adviser makes case to Senate panel for involvement in Libya
By David A. Fahrenthold
A State Department lawyer arrived on Capitol Hill Tuesday with two difficult tasks: Convince a Senate committee that the Obama administration didn’t need Congress’s approval for its military operations in Libya.

Then: Convince the Senate to give Obama that approval anyway.

He didn’t seem to make a lot of headway on either front.

Facing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, legal adviser Harold Koh laid out a flurry of legal arguments to justify the campaign. He did not, at least initially, seem to win over several skeptical senators on the panel.

“I think you’ve undermined the credibility of this administration. I think you’ve undermined the integrity of the War Powers act,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). “You’ve done a great disservice to our country.”

Koh told the committee that while the law says presidents must obtain congressional authorization before sending troops into hostilities overseas, what’s happening in Libya doesn’t constitute hostilities.

And what if legislators don’t agree? In that case, Koh said, they should still support the campaign, because to do otherwise would help Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi.

“We can all agree it would only serve Gaddafi’s interests” if Congress forced U.S. forces to withdraw, he said.

The hearing followed a long-running pattern in the White House’s handling of the Libyan conflict. Whenever it has tried to pacify unhappy members of Congress, the Obama administration has usually had the opposite effect.

On Tuesday, senators said that the White House had declined to send lawyers from the Pentagon and the Department of Justice, agencies that that had reportedly disagreed with Obama’s decision on Libya.

Instead, it sent Koh, who had reportedly agreed with the president.

“Are you glad that you basically created an issue where no issue had to exist?” Corker asked Koh when his testimony was finished. “Basically sticking a stick in the eye of Congress?”

“If you felt that a stick was stuck, that was not the goal,” Koh said. He conceded, however, that “this controversy has probably not played out as some would have expected.”

Tuesday marked the first time that an administration official has appeared in a formal hearing to defend Obama’s finding that the Libyan operation does not constitute “hostilities.” That finding — designed to exempt the Libyan operation from the 1973 War Powers Resolution — has only inflamed anger on Capitol Hill.

Last week, the GOP-led House voted down a measure that would have authorized the campaign, in a gesture of pique at Obama.

Later Tuesday, the Foreign Relations Committee will hear from independent legal experts and then consider a resolution from Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass. ) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) to authorize limited conflict in Libya.

In his testimony, Koh told the panel that the White House would like this authorization but doesn’t need it. His argument focused on the word “hostilities.”

The Libyan conflict does not meet that definition, he said. That’s because U.S. forces play only a limited role in the NATO-led operation, and because there is little danger to them from the battered Libyan forces. While U.S. troops are mainly in supporting roles such as intelligence-gathering and aerial refueling, there have been strikes on ground targets by American planes and unmanned drones.

“Hostilities is an ambiguous term of art,” Koh said. In the absence of a formal legal definition, he said, Obama had decided it did not apply in Libya.

That argument seemed acceptable to Kerry, the committee’s chairman. “In Libya today, no American is being shot at. No American troops are on the ground, and we’re not going to put them there,” he said. Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) said that Koh’s argument was “largely compelling.”

But other senators on the committee were dubious.

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) called the argument an “incredible assertion.” Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) said it was a “contorted legal definition.” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) echoed others in his concern about the precedent of letting presidents begin military operations without congressional approval by asserting that the other side wouldn’t shoot back effectively

“It seems to be hard to say that doesn’t involve hostilities,” Lee said.



By David A. Fahrenthold | 12:12 PM ET, 06/28/2011



Yet there are complete mindless morons here that think my thread is racist...they're full of schyt! If they'd take the time to read the OP and then this one...sounds EXACTLY like a monarchy behaving badly to me. If that's the new defination of racism...just wow...what a leap and a stretch to brand someone because I don't suck off the Democratic Party and drink the kool-aid.

"Black America has been extremely supportive of our president, but not in this case. A line has been drawn in the sand with respect to our president bombing Africa and Libya in particular because of the history of support when the United States was supporting apartheid in the African continent, it was the people of Libya and the people of Muammar Qaddafi who were fighting to eradicate apartheid. And for those blacks and people of color inside this country who were fighting to eradicate American style apartheid, the people of libya and Muammar Qaddafi were supportive as well."

"Now I don’t know that history, but brother Akbar knows hat history very well and that is part of the reason why black America has drawn this line in the sand because this is something that is a historical relationship that has context that brother Obama ...that President Obama...stepped across. He has crossed over threshold."



Guess who said this?

There are no hostilities in Libya.
You're either with Gaddafi or against him.


The reality is the USA had to jump in because France and the United Kingdom were going to do it without the USA and seriously undermine the role of "world cop".

Um...they're giving combat pay to the soldiers in that theater.

Combat pay.

Definition of COMBAT
1: a fight or contest between individuals or groups
2: conflict, controversy
3: active fighting in a war : action casualties suffered in combat


Examples of COMBAT
Some of these soldiers have never seen combat.
He was killed in combat.

It sounds like Obama should yank their combat pay.