People are overthinking the whole question of whether the President should have gone to Congress to authorize the Libya war. They're especially overthinking why he chose not to.

It's quite simple. The President didn't go to Congress because he never thought he'd need to go to Congress. Obama spent three weeks dithering and then almost a full week telegraphing his intent not to intervene. But when the time came to announce his decision, he flinched and made a last-second gut decision to go to war.

The decision to commit the United States to war wasn't out of any sudden change of heart about the value of Libyan lives. Nor did the President suddenly discover U.S. national interests in North Africa. He did it because he was getting internationally embarrassed by the French and by Secretary Clinton. He did it because he was looking bad and after three and a half weeks of polling his numbers were looking worse.

So, having failed to make any effort at all to reach out to Congress on the issue because he never expected that he would have to and with his Brazil vacation imminent, there simply wasn't any time left to get Congressional authorization. Yes, he could have gotten it, in the sense that I'm absolutely sure the votes are there. But it would have taken a few more days and not even the MBM could pretend that he was "leading" on the Libya issue at that point.

As for the Constitutional issue -- should he have to go to Congress to commit the United States to war? -- well, yes.

As any constitutional conservative knows, Congress has the authority to declare war. And while this doesn't require that Congress use any particular magic words ("this is a declaration of war"), it does require that they authorize the President to order military action against another country. With a single exception during President Clinton's second term, Presidents have for the past 40 years or so always gotten Congressional authorization for war action prior to or at least contemporaneously with military action. It seems Obama isn't even planning to get retroactive authorization and that's a problem.

The possible exception to this clear constitutional rule is under the War Powers Resolution of 1973. Setting aside whether the resolution is even constitutional, it at least would provide cover for a President committing the United States to war without going to Congress for a while. But according to its text the President can only invoke the War Powers Resolution to go to war if the United States is under attack or serious threat. Obama cannot possibly claim that was the case before he went to war against Libya.

So this is yet another end run around Congress, which is what he's been doing since well before the GOP took back the House. Only this is far worse than merely avoiding Congress on Yucca Mountain, offshore drilling, net neutrality, card check, and cap and trade. The President has committed the United States to war and placed Service Members in danger without constitutionally-required authority to do so.

Waging war in violation of the U.S. Constitution sounds like a High Crime to me. So I'd like someone to explain to me why we shouldn't be talking about impeachment right now.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:43 AM | Comments (186)
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Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:57 AM | Comments (74)
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It's not much of a point, this post, now that the CIC finally got around to telling Congress about the intervention. Mostly just an excuse to post this awesome p-shop by Stoaty Weasel.

This glued up, mucked up who "knows what the hell policy is actually in play" is now our official mission. For a few days it seems.

The nation is mobilized.

I haven't been this inspired since the night Geraldo opened "the vault".

via Andy who also posts killer headline stuff here.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 07:04 PM | Comments (71)
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Julian Assange - Worst House Guest Ever?

Here's a short film based on people's reminisces of having Assange as a house guest. Apparently he was like a real-life version of the SNL skit, "The Thing That Would Not Leave" (unfortunately not online), only this time it was in Odor-rama and involved rotted fruit somehow.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:36 PM | Comments (742)
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John Nolte from Big Hollywood puts it well here. Basically, we just attacked a Middle Eastern country with no Congressional authorization.

Where is the anti-war movement?

I'd love to claim credit for the idea, but it was all DrewM. His brain, my photoshopping.

Posted by: Slublog at 05:15 PM | Comments (78)
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She didn't say that, of course. She just said she had no idea that the liberal democrat redistributionist welfare tax-parasite state she has helped created could possibly want you to pay taxes on a high-end luxury transport item.

And this isn't the first whoopsie she's had with her very own private airline. Earlier this month it was disclosed that she was actually billing the US Treasury for flights she was taking on Air McCaskill.

She didn't know. She just plum didn't know that the government she works for had any interest in slapping taxes on high-end property. Just didn't know.

And didn't bother to ask anyone, either. Just assumed that the liberal welfare tax-parasite state she has helped create wouldn't have any interest in extracting additional tax dollars on a plane.

Posted by: Ace at 02:27 PM | Comments (317)
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Subtitled: How the Left Wing Blogosphere Spreads Ridiculous Political Lies.

They're just making stuff up. And more embarrassing, then everyone just links the bloggers making the absurd claims without 1, checking to see if it's accurate, or 2, anyone's bullshit meters going off even a little bit.

Number 2 is important if you're someone tossing out a lot of links and stuff. A functioning bullshit detector can keep you from saying silly stuff even if you're (like me) kind of lazy and think reading is for fags.

And even more important than everyone just playing follow-the-leader and repeating the original false claim -- then everyone also doubles-down and claims that it's all true, even in the face of perfect evidence it's entirely false.

Worth reading.

These are the people feeding stories to the Make Believe Media. This is their junior league.

That's Lee Stranahan again, by the way, continuing to endear himself to the leftwing blogosphere.

Posted by: Ace at 01:54 PM | Comments (91)
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Last week the CBO dismissed numerous claims made by Obama in his farcical budget.

Among the various bullshit items was a claim that his billions for Chief Engineer Woo-Woo Biden's hobby would not increase the deficit, as they'd be paid for by a completely unnamed "bipartisan funding" source.

A bipartisan funding source for a deranged old man's pet obsession? Doubtful.

But what was Obama thinking when he included the vague reference to a "bipartisan funding" source? Strangely, although he couldn't specifically name the source of the funding, he was pretty specific about how much "funding" he'd see: $328 billion.

That's pretty specific, isn't it? Not $300 billion, not $400 billion... nice round numbers indicating guesses. Not even $325 billion, which at least would be a guess to the nearest quarter of a hundred billion dollars.

Nope. $328 billion. Very specific. Not rounded or guestimated.

Isn't it strange than in speaking of a vague, undefined "bipartisan funding" source you're able to plot out such a specific "revenue enhancement" flowing from it? It's almost as if Obama knows exactly what he wants this "bipartisan funding" source to be but is concealing it from the public.

Well, Keith Hennessey did so calculation -- turns out that $328 billion can be had via a 25 cent per gallon tax hike on gas, rising with inflation.

$328 B is a lot of money. You may think you know what this line refers to: a gas tax increase. ThatÂ’s what I thought. As a rough rule of thumb, the government would raise about $1B per year for each penny per gallon increase in the tax on gasoline and diesel fuel. If we match the numbers in the OMB table, it looks like about +25 cents per gallon in 2012, growing to maybe +34 cents by 2021. ThatÂ’s roughly equivalent to a 25 cent per gallon increase, indexed to inflation. [Edited-- his previous estimates were eliminated.]

Coincidence? Yeah, I don't really believe in coincidences.

Meanwhile, you will not be shocked to learn that Dear Reader has decided not to lead on Social Security, but instead to let other people lead, and then come in later after more courageous leaders have prepared the field.

This despite the fact that Obama stated that he "rejected" the "conventional wisdom" that a politician could only "hedge, dodge, and spin" on Social Security.

He specifically vowed to lead on the issue for a change.

He lied.

And yes, he's also lying about raising taxes. Shock, huh?

Bigger Point: There is no way to pay for Obama's European-sized welfare state by taxing the "rich." You can tax the rich at 100% rates and it still is not enough.

You have to go where the money is: The middle class, which dwarfs the rich in population size.

So that's where Obama is going -- all of his previous lies to the contrary.

Posted by: Ace at 12:09 PM | Comments (264)
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"As I've stated..."

In response to a question he says the mission is to protect civilians but, as I've said, Gaddaffy has to go. It's a weak answer that doesn't answer the question.

Is ousting Gadaffy a goal? He won't say. He's talking more about sanctions. I think he's trying to say the military goal is to protect civilians but his tightening-noose sanctions are supposed to further the Gadaffy-must-go goal.

Posted by: Ace at 10:45 AM | Comments (248)
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Is there another reporter who is so obvious as to liberal bias and Obama-love? She competes with Chris Matthews on this score, but Matthews is not a reporter. In fact, he's barely even on TV.

Remarkable.

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, who after a 2008 presidential debate hailed Barack Obama’s foreign policy knowledge (“boy, he did show a command of foreign policy in terms of the nuts and bolts of it”), on Sunday’s Meet the Press trumpeted now-President Obama’s Libya action: “This was pretty remarkable – bringing this whole coalition together and getting the Arab League” to back military action.

Mitchell also proclaimed Ambassador Susan Rice “did a remarkable job at the UN” where she delivered “some very adept diplomacy.”

She reverses cause and effect, acting subject and acted-upon object -- Obama did not put this coalition together. The British and French did, and then Obama's Women had to nag him into joining an already-created coalition.

And Obama did not get the Arab League on board -- they were calling for a no-fly zone ten days ago.

This is the nastiest, stupidest woman on cable television news. If you disagree, please challenge me with your own nomination. And I don't think even Nina Totenberg is this brazen, before you say her.

And Helen Thomas is fired. So she's out.

Meanwhile... Bill Maher remains unfunny.

Bill Maher has never actually been funny. He had attitude in an era when comics were abundant and so a definable character trait was great for differentiating oneself from competitors.

But he's never been funny. He just walked around with a huge ego as if he was incredibly talented and had earned that.

I know he wasn't funny, because I actually wanted to like him when younger, because I liked the comics with rock-star, cocky attitudes, like Dennis Miller and later Norm MacDonald (a bit on Norm-- Norm MacDonald played half-rock-star and half-normal-everyday-dumb-guy-just-trying-to-understand-life).

So, being prepared to dig him, I sat down and watched one of his HBO comedy specials. And discovered, to my disappointment, he... wasn't funny.

Like Margaret Cho, he's just always specialized not in jokes so much as, I don't know what to call them -- sentences. He said sentences. The audience agreed with many of these sentences. They didn't like the people Maher didn't like and so clapped at sentences calling other people stupid.

But they weren't jokes. Most jokes are sentences, but most sentences are not jokes.

Posted by: Ace at 09:40 AM | Comments (243)
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