Look: I am eager to learn stuff I don't know--which requires actively courting and posting smart disagreement.

But as you will understand, I don't like to post things that mischaracterize and are aimed to mislead.

-- Brad Delong

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Sunday, September 1, 2013

Obama's Weak Leadership Emboldens Rogue Mid-East Governements - Again

I wondered how long it would take the idiots on the right to start criticizing Obama for involving Congress in the decision to engage in war-like aggression in Syria.   Only a few hours, as it turns out.  Of course, to the partisan hacks on the right, anything a Rethug does is A-OK, and anything BHO does is weak, stupid, communisitic, or some combination thereof.  Even if it's a 20 year old Rethug plan.

Obama claims he has the power to act without the consent of Congress.  But only Congress has the power to declare war, according to the tattered and trampled U.S. Constitution, if anybody remembers it.  And an act of war is an act of WAR.  Full stop!

But over the last 40 [or perhaps 60] years Congress has abrogated that responsibility, and Presidential Power has expanded to fill the vacuum that created.

While Obama is dong the right thing in consulting Congress, his underlying assumption that he doesn't need to is just plain wrong.

We have been witnessing the slow, agonizing death of representative government in the U.S.A. and the rule of constitutional law since [at least] the Nixon administration.

Or didn't you notice?

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