Panel calls for new war powers legislation
- Thread starter Socrtease
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Socrtease
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This will not work. This president would play chicken with the lives of our troops if Congress cut funding. he would leave them there to die rather than have the congress, in its capacity as a check, MAKE him withdraw troops. They are nothing more than poker chips for Bushlite.
True that. I should have said "Congress".
FUCK THE POLICE
911 EVERY DAY
I was proposing it as a stopgap. I know it would be risky but I think the president would want to avoid those kinds of confrontations.
What we REALLY need is a new amendment that specifically says that "war" is defined as a military action lasting longer than a week.
Good Luck
New member
Nope. Since, according to SCOTUS, the president has pretty much full authority over the military including the ability to deploy without a declaration of war, there can, by definition, be no crime involved with such deployment. The only way to remove a sitting president is by impeachment; and to impeach requires the president be accused of a crime.
There are checks and balances, legally mandated, on the use of nuclear weapons, which involves the agreement of someone from a short list in addition to the president. The reason they can get away with that is nucs are WEAPON, not a military unit. The president can deploy the military how he sees fit, but the use of extraordinary weapons can be controlled by restraining laws. The law cannot restrict the basic weapons of the military, but can do so with extraordinary weapons whose use would bypass the normal deployment of any military units.
gl
i think that we have entered constitutional law with this
since there is nothing in the constitution about the use of weapons and has the president as the commander in chief, limiting the president is a chancy thing and if war is truly needed do we want to wait through congress' bickering
Good Luck
New member
The limit only applies to the use of nuclear weapons. And the limit requires the agreement of one other person in addition to the president, not the approval of congress. The list of people who have authority to confirm a presidential order to use nuclear weapons is relatively short. It includes the VP (of course, who can also be the primary if the president is dead, incapacitated, or out of communications) secdef and secstate, members of the Joint Chiefs, national security adviser, speaker of house, pres pro temp of senate, and I think two or three others I can't name off the top of my head. Not sure if CIA and/or FBI directors are on it or not.
Of that list, there are 5 others, besides the VP, who can instigate a nuclear attack, but they need the agreement of TWO additional voices, not just one. Those are: Chairman JCS, secdef, secstate, speaker and pres pro-temp.
Good Luck
New member
They can't change anything. That's the crux of it. And they know they can't, so they make a bunch of political posturing, just like they did in '73. I'd guess it'll even go so far as to mirror the '73 resolution in that Bush will veto it, and congress will garner enough votes to over ride.
But they still will not have any authority. Any claim to authority over how the president deploys the military is unconstitutional.
If congress wanted to give themselves approval authority over the use of the military, they'd have to write it as a constitutional amendment, not a congressional resolution.
They can do that, and they certainly could impeach and remove a President who took the nation to war without their approval.
It would depend on justification. The Congress would certainly have the power to take them down if they had stepped out of line in even such a circumstance.
The President has the power to respond quickly to situations, if they are acting properly they will gain the support of the Congress. If not, they should face the music. We have the most ball-free Congress that could possibly exist. They almost never work proactively to assert their authority.
They are almost always attempting to retroactively write some law that is supposed to stop it in the future.
I would hate for the president to be questioning if he would get impeached, while contemplating some seemingly necessary military action that had to be done quickly.
I agree congress if currently full of wimps, but that does not mean that wont change in the future.
Maybe if he were required to conviene a quarum of some pannel of congress people who will either support or reject any given short term activity.
There is no basis for making him appear before Congress in order to respond to an emergency situation. He leads and faces the consequences of his decisions.
Considering impeachment is a good thing, it will cause him to pause before making a rash decision that may lead to his removal and negative connotations for the nation.
The reality is, it would be a very rare circumstance indeed that the President would be unable to fend off such a move. It would have to be truly a bad misstep.
I agree that it would be rare. And I agree forcing the pres to be worried about Congresses actions is a good thing. I would just hate to seem him hold back when he should not, because Congress might chastise him/her.
Congress could , and should, also chastise him for inaction when action was clearly indicated.
There is a reason for checks and balances.
Both would be very rare, but IMO necessary. There is a reason that the checks and balances were put into the Constitution. Congress has great powers they can use, instead they have for at least a Century, been totally wimpy.
THey could chastise him for inaction, but I dont think they could impeach him for it.
It depends.
One can think of scenarios where inaction caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands when action could have changed the scenario to only a few thousand deaths. Such inaction would be nearly criminal.