When the War Powers Act was passed in 1973, the country ached from the pain of the Vietnam War, an experience no one wanted to repeat. The conventional wisdom was the Vietnam catastrophe was caused by too much executive war-making discretion. Hence, Congress tried to limit the time the president could deploy troops without explicit Congressional authorization, constraining executive authority.
The Constitution is vague about separation of authority with respect to the use of military force. Congress is entrusted with the power to declare war, but the President is the commander and chief. The courts have been reluctant to intervene in this battle of separation of powers, leaving Congress and the President to contend in the political sphere.
Typically, Republicans incline to according more discretion to the executive, whereas Democrats tilt toward Congressional supremacy. Ironically, Republicans have observed the War Power constraints, even while arguing that the President is not required to. President George W. Bush sought and received Congressional authorization for the actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. The authorization provided political cover in the conflicts. If Bush had pursued those wars without Congressional approval, the country would have been even more divided than it was.
By contrast, Democratic presidents has asserted Presidential authority to act without Congressional approval, seeking instead international sanction. President Bill Clinton did not receive approval for his actions in Bosnia and Haiti. President Barack Obama has further eroded the War Powers Act, by not even making motions to comply with its limitations in the War Power in actions against Libya. International approbation rather than Congressional authorization legitimized the intervention in the eyes of the President. This is particularly surprising given that Obama opined during the 2008 campaign that:
“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.While Vice President Joe Biden was so convinced that a President does not have the authority to act unilaterally without Congressional authority that, when a senator, he boasted that would move to impeach Bush in the event Bush ordered and attack Iran.
I want to make clear and submit to the Untied States Senate pointing out the president has no authority to unilaterally attack Iran. And I want to make it clear, I want it on the record, and I want to make it clear, if he does, as chairman of the foreign relations committee and former chair of the judiciary committee, I will move to impeach him.
I am sure that Biden meant that he would encourage the House to impeach since the Senate does not so.
The sorry situation is that Republicans will not bring the Libyan action to a vote for fear of looking like that they are not supporting the troops and most Democrats dont want to impede a president of their party.
The War Powers Act has been dying almost since the moment of its passage, and perhaps is should. It has been honored more by Republicans than Democrats. However, it would have been more poetic if a Congressional-Executive conflict on war powers would have been effectively settled on something more relevant to direct US interests than Libya.
Thoughts on Evolution and Republican Candidates
Friday, September 2nd, 2011By all conventional standards of the time, William Jennings Bryant was a liberal. He ran for president three times as a Democrat. He opposed the gold standard for limiting credit to farms in his famous and spell binding Cross of Gold speech. He was a populist who railed eloquently against oil companies and railroads. However, most people remember Bryant as the ardent and literalistic fundamentalist Christian who argued against the teaching of evolution in public schools in the famous Scopes Monkey trial.
How can we square Bryants liberalism with a position that many now associate with Republicans? The issue lies with the unfortunate extension of the meaning of the theory of evolution far beyond its legitimate scope. Some people perverted evolution into Social Darwinism, the notion that if some people do poorly in the economy is because they are not a socially fit as the successful. If the rich are more successful, it is consistent with the scientific notion of survival of the fittest. Ever the defender of the downtrodden, Bryant unfortunately conflated his Christian concern for the poor, with the necessity to dispute what he viewed as an anti-working-class ideology. At its heart, Bryant was not really making a scientific argument, but a moral one.
The problem for Bryant was he tried to unnecessarily take sides in a science vs. religion dispute. For many there really is no such conflict. Whenever there is an apparent conflict between science and the Bible, the problem is less likely to be science or the Bible, but rather Biblical interpretation or the inappropriate application of science.
It is the thesis here that for many Americans that disputes about evolution represent an unnecessary defense against people like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens who who argue that science precludes serious religiosity. It is my suspicion that political figures sympathetic to Intelligent Design is less the result of thorough grappling with the scientific issues, an more a defensive reaction to what I call evangelical atheists.
It would be preferable to have Republican presidential candidates with more thoughtful positions on evolution. However, I prefer their faulty Biblical interpretation (from my perspective) to the Constitutional jurisprudence of Democrats who believe that the commerce clause of the Constitution that can extend to grant Congress virtually unlimited powers.
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