Joe Biden: ‘Framers Intended to Grant Congress Power to Initiate All Hostilities, Even Limited Wars’

Cybercast News Service ^ | 3/21/11 | Terence P. Jeffrey

[Nachum]

After studying the constitutional language governing the use of military force and the debates that the Framers had on the issue, Joe Biden determined that the Founding Fathers had vested the power to authorize even the limited use of military force in the Congress not the president---unless it was necessary for the president to act swiftly to repel an attack on the United States or to rescue U.S. citizens. Biden derided the opposite position—that the president could use military force without congressional authorization—as a “monarchist” view of presidential power. That was in 1998, however, when Biden was in the Senate.

[HollyB]

Has anyone heard from Biden on our involvement in Libya? He’s probably being told not to talk about it. Maybe he’d accidentally say the same thing by ‘accident’. Boy, that would be good.

[OneWingedShark]

>Did Jefferson ask congress for permission to send the marines to Tripoli?
>
>Nope.

Just because Congress has not declared war against someone does not preclude that someone from declaring war on us; the Pirates of Tripoli were engaged in acts of war against us thereby “declaring war” through their actions.

[OneWingedShark]

>>“A stupid and pointless question. You should have given up several posts ago. You are in over your head”
>
...
>
>So I take it that you are OK with keeping the land west of the mississippi...even though you feel it’s purchase was unconstitutional...

Not all of them; to wit Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada & California were “spoils of war”* from Mexico.

* Not exactly, Mexico sold them to us in order to appease us so that we wouldn’t invade, conquer, and eradicate them as-a-nation. IIRC, we occupied Mexico City for a time.

[lentulusgracchus]

I swear this must be how it felt to be an underling at Enron or some other company where the CEO is a complete buffoon and everyone knows it.

Actually, I've heard and read that it wasn't like that at Enron .... CEO Ken Lay and his successor Jeff Skilling and their catamitizing CFO (who was the one who got all the gays in the company quasi-marital benefits, from which nonmarried het couples of course were disqualified) were all, all "the smartest guys in the room" ..... actually, the guy who claimed to be overworked who bailed in 1999 or so, was the smartest guy in the room -- he took nine figures with him when he left the not-yet-sinking ship.

So they were all smart, and ruthless, and self-privileging .... but it was also true, that they collected under them a workforce of professionals by and large of whom it could be said that butter would not melt in their mouths. Very, very cool, impersonal people, and not very likeable. Or so I've heard, from people I knew there ... and something I learned about someone I dated who worked there. Frosty girl ....