Thanks for the link (again)! I just took a quick look at it and I can already tell I'm going to enjoy reading that one. I agree the President has the power, however I think exodus may require a little more than the word of the Supreme Court and I'd like to hear what his reasoning is.
Regards,
Boot Hill
To: Boot Hill*************************
"These cases settled the issue whether a state of war could exist without formal declaration by Congress. When hostile action is taken against the Nation, or against its citizens or commerce, the appropriate response by order of the President may be resort to force."
http://supreme.lp.findlaw.com/constitution/article01/41.html#5
# 265 by Roscoe
Wow. That's an eyefull, Roscoe, but I read it.
"...the argument was advanced that the war power of the National Government is an attribute of sovereignty and hence not dependent upon the affirmative grants of the written Constitution..."
That's a stupid argument. What good is a written Constitution, if the powers of government don't need to be defined?
"... namely that the power to wage war is implied from the power to declare it..."
Well, that makes sense.
"...the colonies were a unit in foreign affairs, acting through a common agency--namely, the Continental Congress, composed of delegates from the thirteen colonies. That agency exercised the powers of war and peace, raised an army, created a navy, and finally adopted the Declaration of Independence. . . . It results that the investment of the Federal Government with the powers of external sovereignty did not depend upon the affirmative grants of the Constitution..."
Again, a stupid argument. The several States were just that, SEVERAL States. The fact that they acted in unison against a common enemy didn't result in a loss of sovereignty by any State.
That's the arguement I've been making in regard to the United Nations. We act at the direction of the U.N., inviolation of our own laws. We DID NOT give up any sovereignty when we joined the U.N.
The several States at war with England, DID NOT act as a single nation. They acted as allied States fighting against a common enemy.
Declaration of War
In the early draft of the Constitution presented to the Convention by its Committee of Detail, Congress was empowered ''to make war.'' Although there were solitary suggestions that the power should better be vested in the President alone, in the Senate alone, or in the President and the Senate, the sentiment of the Convention, as best we can determine from the limited notes of the proceedings, was that the potentially momentous consequences of initiating armed hostilities should be called up only by the concurrence of the President and both Houses of Congress.
In contrast to the English system, the Framers did not want the wealth and blood of the Nation committed by the decision of a single individual; in contrast to the Articles of Confederation, they did not wish to forego entirely the advantages of executive efficiency nor to entrust the matter solely to a branch so close to popular passions.
Just as I've said all along.
"...Sixty years later, the Supreme Court sustained the blockade of the Southern ports instituted by Lincoln in April 1861 at a time when Congress was not in session..."
The view of the majority was proclaimed by a unanimous Court a few years later when it became necessary to ascertain the exact dates on which the war began and ended. The Court, the Chief Justice said, must ''refer to some public act of the political departments of the government to fix the dates; and, for obvious reasons, those of the executive department, which may be, and, in fact, was, at the commencement of hostilities, obliged to act during the recess of Congress, must be taken. The proclamation of intended blockade by the President may therefore be assumed as marking the first of these dates, and the proclamation that the war had closed, as marking the second.''
The President may act in an emergency, just as I've said. However, even though the absence of Congress constitutes an emergency, when Congress reconvenes, THE EMERGENCY IS OVER.
Once Congress is in session, a Declaration of War is required to comtinue a war. Otherwise, an aggressive President only has to wait until Congress goes home to declare war on his on power.
These cases settled the issue whether a state of war could exist without formal declaration by Congress.
These cases settled nothing. These cases merely set precedents, which is just another way of saying "don't bother me with any additional facts."
When hostile action is taken against the Nation, or against its citizens or commerce, the appropriate response by order of the President may be resort to force. But the issue so much a source of controversy in the era of the Cold War and so divisive politically in the context of United States involvement in the Vietnamese War has been whether the President is empowered to commit troops abroad to further national interests in the absence of a declaration of war or specific congressional authorization short of such a declaration.
There is only "controversy" if everyone avoids reading the Constitution and relying on the words written there. By relying on precedents, the opinions of judges, instead of the Constitution, all things are possible.
The Supreme Court studiously refused to consider the issue in any of the forms in which it was presented, and the lower courts generally refused, on ''political question'' grounds, to adjudicate the matter.
The Cold "War," the Vietnam "war," the Korean "war."
Yes, they REALLY were wars, but they were illegal wars. They were fought without a Declaration of War.
In all that time, the Supreme Court refused to hear a case claiming that those wars were illegal. Our Judicial branch is just as corrupt as the other two branches of government.
In the absence of judicial elucidation, the Congress and the President have been required to accommodate themselves in the controversy to accept from each other less than each has been willing to accept but more than either has been willing to grant.
I can read and understand the plain meaning of the Constitution. I don't believe that I'm that much smarter than our elected leaders.
The plain fact is, our leadership is corrupt.
Our government plans and commits murder, and the agents who actually do the killing are promoted rather than being punished.
President Clinton sells military secrets to foreign enemies, and act of treason, and is protected by Republicans who are supposed to be his political opponents.
President Bush declares war as if he has the legal power to do so, and Congress accepts the war as fact.
Democrats and Republicans band together to pass the un-Constitutional Patriot act, and President Bush signs it into law. Never mind that if followed, our freedom ended the day it was signed.