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From the BNO Newsroom. WASHINGTON, D.C. (BNO NEWS) -- President Obama on Thursday extended the national emergency declared following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. President Bush first declared the national emergency on September 14, 2001, three days after the terrorist attacks which left thousands of people dead in three American cities. The National Emergencies Act requires each national emergency to be ended or continued every year. "Because the terrorist threat continues, the national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, and the powers and authorities adopted to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond September 14, 2009. Therefore,...

(Fifth in a series of ten. For other articles in this series, click on View all articles by John Armor on ChronWatch -- and "Blogs by this author.") The powers of the president were designed to be sufficient to lead the nation, and insufficient to dominate the nation. In the hands of a self-restrained leader such as the first president, George Washington, the extent of powers of the chief executive were not a potential problem. In the 20th century, both books and articles have decried the "imperial presidency." The thesis is that recent presidents have successfully claimed more power than...

The National War Powers Consultation Act Is a Dangerous Fig Leaf by "Long street" Did you ever hear of something called "The National War Powers Commission"? Put together by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, it is billed as a private non-partisan panel led by former secretaries of state James A. Baker, III and Warren Christopher. It is said the commission will examine how the Constitution allocates the powers of beginning, conducting, and ending war. From my perspective, as a lowly American citizen, this is just another way of getting "creative" with the U.S. Constitution...

Anyone familiar with the threat posed by the advancing American Fifth Column understands all too clearly that our Constitution is under attack. Whether it is the insistence that the Constitution is a living document meant to conform to the will of the times or the institution of political correctness – a shadow set of laws effectively usurping the laws of our Constitutional Republic – the American Fifth Column is slowly, incrementally, systematically, chipping away at the wisdom as set forth by our Founders and Framers. With news that a non-governmentally charged commission is introducing a measure that would impose “group...

Anyone familiar with the threat posed by the advancing American Fifth Column understands all too clearly that our Constitution is under attack. Whether it is the insistence that the Constitution is a living document meant to conform to the will of the times or the institution of political correctness – a shadow set of laws effectively usurping the laws of our Constitutional Republic – the American Fifth Column is slowly, incrementally, systematically, chipping away at the wisdom as set forth by our Founders and Framers. With news that a non-governmentally charged commission is introducing a measure that would impose “group...

The United States needs a new law requiring that the president consult with Congress before going to war, a blue-ribbon panel led by two former secretaries of state said Tuesday. The current War Powers Resolution is "ineffective, and it should be repealed and it should be replaced," James Baker said in a joint appearance with Warren Christopher, announcing the results of the study they led. The recommendation follows failed efforts by Democrats in Congress to put a stop to the war in Iraq or to put conditions on President Bush's conduct of it. Congress passed a joint resolution to authorize...

A bipartisan commission of high-profile congressional and White House alumni released a report Tuesday calling for the repeal of the 1973 War Powers Resolution. The National War Powers Commission, co-chaired by former Secretaries of State James Baker (R) and Warren Christopher (D), wants the next Congress to enact the War Power Consultation Act. This act would require the president to “consult” with a defined, permanent joint committee of congressional leaders before engaging in a “significant armed conflict” lasting longer than a week. “This is a practical solution to a theoretical debate,” Baker said. He noted that the conclusions of...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The president should be forced by law to consult Congress before going to war, a bipartisan panel including several prominent former U.S. officials said on Tuesday. The commission led by former Secretaries of State James Baker, a Republican, and Warren Christopher, a Democrat, aimed to clarify the cloudy division between the White House and the U.S. Congress over the power to conduct war. The panel proposed a new law -- the "War Powers Consultation Act" -- that would require the president to consult with Congress before deploying U.S. troops into "significant armed conflict," defined as combat operations...

Put War Powers Back Where They Belong By JAMES A. BAKER III and WARREN CHRISTOPHER THE most agonizing decision we make as a nation is whether to go to war. Our Constitution ambiguously divides war powers between the president (who is the commander in chief) and Congress (which has the power of the purse and the power to declare war). The founders hoped that the executive and legislative branches would work together, but in practice the two branches don’t always consult. And even when they do, they often dispute their respective powers. A bipartisan group that we led, the National...

<p>When you buy a car, a blender, a hair dryer, etc., you also get an owner's manual. Many of us start using the device without reading about it, get ourselves into trouble, and fall back on the last alternative in computer programming. "When all else fails, RTFM," translated loosely as "Read the pea-pickin’ manual."</p>

<p>The reporters agree...armed with his consistently conservative record and problem solving vision for the future, Senator Thompson passes the test by standing out from the crowd and offering real solutions for real problems.</p> <p>"Fred Thompson is passing his first big test."("Spotlight on Thompson in GOP debate," Political Intelligence, Boston Globe, 10/9/07).</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) - Four years ago, Congress passed legislation authorizing President Bush to go to war in Iraq. Now Senate Democrats want to take it back. Key lawmakers, backed by party leaders, are drafting legislation that would effectively revoke the broad authority granted to the president in the days Saddam Hussein was in power, and leave U.S. troops with a limited mission as they prepare to withdraw. Officials said Thursday the precise wording of the measure remains unsettled. One version would restrict American troops in Iraq to fighting al-Qaida, training Iraqi army and police forces, maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity and...

[Paragraph 1] REP. JOHN MURTHA (D-Pa.) has a message for anyone who spent the week following the House of Representatives' marathon debate on Iraq: You've been distracted by a sideshow. "We have to be careful that people don't think this is the vote," the 74-year-old congressman said of the House's 246-182 decision in favor of a resolution disapproving of President Bush's troop surge. "The real vote will come on the legislation we're putting together." That would be Mr. Murtha's plan to "stop the surge" and "force a redeployment" of U.S. forces from Iraq while ducking the responsibility that should come...

WASHINGTON (AP) - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that President Bush lacks the authority to invade Iran without specific approval from Congress, a fresh challenge to the commander in chief on the eve of a symbolic vote critical of his troop buildup in Iraq. Pelosi, D-Calif., noted that Bush consistently said he supports a diplomatic resolution to differences with Iran ``and I take him at his word.'' At the same time, she said, ``I do believe that Congress should assert itself, though, and make it very clear that there is no previous authority for the president, any president, to...

President Bush has not been shy about asserting robust powers for the presidency in waging war, but lately he has seemed to concede that Congress has a role to play as well. Lawmakers, he has indicated, are within their rights to try to cap total deployments or limit where troops can go in Iraq. "They have the right to try to use the power of the purse to determine policy," the president told editors of the Wall Street Journal recently, in an interview that took some of his strongest conservative supporters by surprise. For a president who has asserted broad...

Washington -- Like chess players planning several moves ahead, some Democrats in Congress are looking toward what they see as the inevitable clash with President Bush over who has the power to end the Iraq war. Such a confrontation could provoke a constitutional crisis between two co-equal branches of government -- a Democratic-led Congress bolstered by polls showing the war is deeply unpopular and a Republican president who so far won't budge from his position that he is the decision-maker who will control policy for Iraq. "Since the president is adamant about pursuing his failed policies in Iraq, Congress has...

As the Left continues to push for the legal rights of enemy combatants captured in the War on islamo-fascist terror, we get another glaring example of why military tribunals are necessary. The Judge presiding over the trial of Saddam Hussein said yesterday that he did not believe the deposed leader of Iraq was a dictator. This comes despite a preponderance of evidence of his genocide, corruption at the expense of his people, and overall oppression of the people of Iraq. If this is an indication of the Left's idea of a fair trial, they have succeeded in revealing to the...

"Trust the president." That was the Bush administration's main defense of the president's bizarre choice of corporate lawyer Harriet Miers for a seat on the Supreme Court. But the administration also had a backup rationale: as D.C.'s Hill newspaper reported, in an October 3, 2005, conference call with conservative leaders, Republican National Committee chair Ken Mehlman stressed "the need to confirm a justice who will not interfere with the administration's management of the war on terrorism." It was a bit unsettling to hear that proposition stated so baldly, but no one who has followed the administration's drive to expand executive...

In the days following Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush charted a course of action to respond to the worst attack on our homeland in history. He promised to use every tool available to defeat al Qaeda and pledged to take the fight to the enemy abroad as he worked to prevent another attack. As he said in the State of the Union address, "Our country must remain on the offensive against terrorism here at home." The president has the constitutional responsibility--and authority--to lead this response. After Sept. 11, Congress immediately confirmed the president's constitutional authority to "use all necessary and...

As Capitol Hill prepares to battle the White House over George W. Bush's expanding war powers, moderate Senators on both sides of the aisle are quietly considering a range of options that would attempt at the very least to delineate the President's authority, if not roll it back. Bush's claims of wartime license are so great--the White House and Justice Department have argued that the Commander in Chief's pursuit of national security cannot be constrained by any laws passed by Congress, even when he is acting against U.S. citizens--that some Senators are considering a constitutional amendment to limit his powers....

The latest attack by the Democrats on the Bush Administration has come under the name “NSA Spying Scandal”. Only the American Left can go from crying out that Bush failed to “connect the dots” before September 11th, to a full scale attempt to prevent him from preventing future attacks on this Nation. A glance back at American history will provide precedent for the President’s war powers and a view at how other Presidents used them. Lincoln: During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suspended Habeas corpus on April 27, 1861. President Lincoln took this action in Maryland and several...

We begin with what this column does not charge. I do not question John Kerry's patriotism. I do strongly question both his intelligence and his ethics. There are many aspects of John Kerry's career which should be reviewed during his campaign for President. I've previously covered my personal knowledge of him. Here, I’ll skip all other questions except his capacities as a military officer then, and his capacity to be the Commander in Chief today. To understand the two sides of this modern citizen-soldier, it’s worthwhile to reexamine the two sides of the career of General Benedict Arnold. The Battle...

<p>Yesterday's big legal news--no, not the charges against Michael Jackson--is that two federal appeals courts issued decisions ignoring the fact that the U.S. homeland was attacked on September 11.</p> <p>From New York comes a ruling by the Second Circuit ordering the release of alleged dirty bomber Jose Padilla. In San Francisco, the Ninth Circuit decided that the detainees at Guantanamo must have access to lawyers and the federal courts.</p>

WASHINGTON - Some 4,500 more American sailors and Marines have been ordered to position themselves closer to Liberia to be ready for possible duty in the embattled West African nation, officials said Monday. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed a deployment order over the weekend sending a three-ship amphibious ready group from its position off the Horn of Africa into the Mediterranean Sea, defense officials said. That would put the group in a position to get to the west coast of Africa faster, if needed for an evacuation of Americans, peacekeeping or some other mission.

Bush vs. Congress: The War Powers Resolution By Henry Mark Holzer FrontPageMagazine.com | September 12, 2002 On September 4, 2002, amidst a national guessing game over President Bush's intentions regarding Iraq and the role of Congress in his plans, the president sent a carefully worded letter to Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert. After establishing that America and the civilized world are at a crossroads regarding Iraq, Mr. Bush wrote (the emphasis is mine): I am in the process of deciding how to proceed. This is an important decision that must be made with great thought and care....

World War I Joint Resolution Passed by the United States Senate and House of Representatives Effective April 6, 1917, at 1:18 p.m. WHEREAS, The Imperial German Government has committed repeated acts of war against the Government and the people of the United States of America; therefore, be it Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the state of war between the United States and the Imperial German Government, which has thus been thrust upon the United States, is hereby formally declared; and That the President be, and he is...

The Nation August 19, 2002 The Rush To War By Richard Falk The American Constitution at the very beginning of the Republic sought above all to guard the country against reckless, ill-considered recourse to war. It required a declaration of war by the legislative branch, and gave Congress the power over appropriations even during wartime. Such caution existed before the great effort of the twentieth century to erect stronger barriers to war by way of international law and public morality, and to make this resistance to war the central feature of the United Nations charter. Consistent with this undertaking, German...

<p>WASHINGTON - Select any moment in American history and you can find agitation about the meaning of the Constitution. Right now, though, the pondering, probing and hand wringing have reached something of a constitutional clamor.</p> <p>Secret detentions, wiretaps on lawyers' conversations with clients, military tribunals, monitoring of ordinary Americans. Each day seems to bring new worries about freedoms being infringed, a concern shared in some cases by judges who have blocked the government's course.</p>