Posted on 06/21/2011 4:30:44 AM PDT by tobyhill
The White House bypassed the administration’s own written guidelines for resolving major legal disputes when it overruled the Justice Department’s advice that the president seek congressional approval for U.S. military operations in Libya, according to some legal scholars.
The disclosure over the weekend that President Barack Obama rejected the advice of senior Justice Department legal advisers — including Attorney General Eric Holder — has drawn sharp congressional criticism in recent days, ranging from House Speaker John Boehner to liberal Democrats such as Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York.
It is also provoking debate among legal scholars, some of whom told NBC News that they were unaware of any recent precedent for the way the White House reached its legal conclusions about Libya. One top former legal adviser to Obama, Dawn Johnsen, called the accounts of the White House's handling of the matter "disturbing."
"There may be a precedent for this, but I can't think of one," said Robert Chesney, a University of Texas law professor who specializes in national security law. "This is not the way the process is supposed to work."
For decades, Chesney and other legal scholars said, legal and constitutional questions within the government have been resolved by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). Just last year, a six-page Justice Department memo described OLC's mission as providing "controlling advice" to executive branch officials on questions of law.
The memo spelled out how the office's decisions were supposed to be reached: After receiving input from agencies throughout the government, OLC lawyers would provide "principled" legal analysis to executive branch officials, not opinions "designed merely to advance the policy preferences of the president or other officials."
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Do these people really not understand how fascism works? Rules are for the other guy.
“Rules?! We don’t need no stinkin’ rules!”
Having a narcissist President (wannabe dictator) doesn’t work in a Constitutional Republic.
I’m even more convinced that Barry has Hugo Chavez posters on his bedroom wall.
Obama will get a pass like he always has throughout his life: he’s the Affirmative Action President.
If not for his injuries he would have played Golf with Obama last weekend.
If your actions don’t fit the rules, create more definitions and rules that fit want you want to do. When has ANYONE EVER heard the words “Kinetic Military Action” also known as KMA (Kiss My #ss), which is Barry’s contemptuous attitude toward the Constitution and Congress. Dropping bombs on people, calling it a “humanitarian mission”.....gimme a break!
There really is only one reason why Obama did this...he would have gotten congressional approval if he had presented a plan and rationale for his decision, so it’s not about congress not giving him the green light..
It’s all about trying to semantically say we are “not at war” so that he can say he has not started a war. We all know that people are dying in Libya...we all know that we are conducting the vast majority of sorties through NATO...but if he doesn’t go to congress about this, then he can deny that he...the Nobel Peace Prize winner...has started another war.
The Republicans should be shouting THIS out...not telling us to shut up~
It’s really surprising that MSNBC, the Illegal’s prime shill, would publish so critical an article. However, they’re still stooging for him, as can be seen from this:
“Obama . . . was once a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago[.]”
Duh! No, he wasn’t. For twelve yeears he was nothing but an untenured “constitutional law lecturer,” who never, before or since, wrote a single published law review article or book on any legal issue, let alone a constitutional law isssue.
Obama . . . would have gotten congressional approval if he had presented a plan and rationale for his decision[.]
Unlikely, because he couldn’t have presented any rationale that would have shown how the proposed action would have served Ameica’s best interests, rather than being in the interest of the Muslinm Brotherhood and AQ.
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