Matt is right, you need to read the constitution.

quote:

Originally posted by flaja:

Most environmentalists are first and foremost political. What they care about is advancing the leftist agenda, not conserving natural resources for future generations.

Hogwash also, flaja. Simplistic, agenda-driven, baseless hogwash.

Wayne

Flaja and gridgardener need to stay after school and look up the Constitution and The War Powers Act of 1973. Then write a 3 page report on what they actually say and not what they think they ought to say.

This might save them the failing grade they are headed for.

Wayne

quote:

you reading more into the Constitution than is really there.

No, I'm reading it strictly, plainly, and not giving fanciful powers to someone that isn't there.

I don't like people trying to make the law to fit their own political agendas -- whether it's gay marriage or domestic wire taps.

quote:

Matt is right, you need to read the constitution.

What power does the President have as commander-in-chief if everything he does with the military has to have the approval of Congress? A power that you have only if someone else gives their OK is no power at all.

quote:

Hogwash also, flaja. Simplistic, agenda-driven, baseless hogwash.

You have evidence that I am wrong? How is environmentalism and leftwing politics not one and the same thing?

quote:

Hogwash also, flaja. Simplistic, agenda-driven, baseless hogwash.

quote:

Flaja and gridgardener need to stay after school and look up the Constitution and The War Powers Act of 1973. Then write a 3 page report on what they actually say and not what they think they ought to say.

This might save them the failing grade they are headed for.

How old are you?

How much history and politics have you witnessed in your lifetime?

How much history and politics have you studied in your lifetime?

If the War Powers Act is constitutional and the President has no power to deploy the armed forces except with the approval of Congress, why was the War Powers Act not enacted until 1973? How do you explain the fact that the president has routinely throughout history deployed U.S. troops to fight Indians? Did he always have the formal approval of Congress to do this? And if the President cannot deploy troops whenever he thinks it is necessary, why didn’t Congress dissolve the army and navy in December 1861 after Lincoln had been fighting the Civil War for 7 months? And why didn’t Congress object when Truman sent U.S. troops to Korea when Congress never declared war or even passed a resolution giving its OK?

And if the President does not legitimately have the power to deploy U.S. troops on his own volition, why was the War Powers Act even necessary? Why did Congress need to pass a resolution to give itself the power to veto the actions of the president if it is absolutely clear that the Constitution gives the Congress the power to veto the actions of the president?

How long have you been in the habit of being so insufferably insulting to people just because they don’t agree with you?

You need to take your condescending attitude and go straight to Hell.

quote:

Hogwash also, flaja. Simplistic, agenda-driven, baseless hogwash.

quote:

Flaja and gridgardener need to stay after school and look up the Constitution and The War Powers Act of 1973. Then write a 3 page report on what they actually say and not what they think they ought to say.

This might save them the failing grade they are headed for.

quote:

No, I'm reading it strictly, plainly, and not giving fanciful powers to someone that isn't there.

Again, if the Constitution is clear that the President is not commander-in-chief except when he gets the OK of Congress, why did Congress wait until 1973 to object to the deployment of U.S. troops without any declaration of war or other congressional approval?

Read the 1973 War Powers Act and the Constitution and then we'll talk. Only a fool would debate someone who only speculates about what the documents say rather than argues from facts.

No, never mind. We won't talk. I just saw your line telling me to "go to hell." You're now on the worthless troll list and are henceforth ignored. Have a good life making up facts.

Wayne

Activating the ignore button....

quote:

Originally posted by flaja:
You need to take your condescending attitude and go straight to Hell.

Where's corncobchowder when the fur starts flying?

flaja, mighty big words for a newcomer. I can see you're not long for this site. Pretty sad when a supposed conservative can't talk over a condescending attitude. I suggest you return to the sandbox until you're ready to tangle with the big boys.

Dirt

BTW that's my friend you're talking to.

quote:

If the War Powers Act is constitutional and the President has no power to deploy the armed forces except with the approval of Congress, why was the War Powers Act not enacted until 1973?

Because Congress did not see the need until then to limit the President's ability acting internationally.

They had previously restricted such power domestically in the Insurrection Act of 1807, and the Posse Commitatus (sp?) act after the Civil War.

It's the nature of law overtime they are made more specific and restrictive -- often in response to people being idiots and behaving in an unacceptable manner. Just because the first person to build a car didn't have a driver's license does not mean it's not within the state's police powers to establish driver's licenses. Just because the President previously authorized use of military force without prior blessing of Congress does not mean it is outside of their powers to further regulate his future use of force.

As the U.S. became more interventionist throughout the world, the need to regulate the President's powers became more necessary. Other then some relatively small Naval operations against piracy and similiar interference with American interests, and some more intense but still fairly small messing around in China & Korea along with European powers at the time of forcing open trade with the orient, prior to WWII the U.S. seldom acted outside of the western hemsiphere (Monroe Doctrine). The Phillipines was picked up a bonus from a war fought primarily over western hemisphere territories. Following WWII, the U.S. engaged in actions initiated solely by the President of a scope and scale far beyond any previous precedents. Looking at Korea and Vietnam, the Congress acted to provide rules for the President to follow.

quote:

Originally posted by Dirt Pit:

quote:

Originally posted by flaja:
You need to take your condescending attitude and go straight to Hell.

Where's corncobchowder when the fur starts flying?

flaja, mighty big words for a newcomer. I can see you're not long for this site. Pretty sad when a supposed conservative can't talk over a condescending attitude. I suggest you return to the sandbox until you're ready to tangle with the big boys.

Dirt

BTW that's my friend you're talking to.

I agree, both with flaja not being long for this site and also that Wayne is my friend, even if we seldom agree on anything.

quote:

Because Congress did not see the need until then to limit the President's ability acting internationally.

They had previously restricted such power domestically in the Insurrection Act of 1807, and the Posse Commitatus (sp?) act after the Civil War.

It's the nature of law overtime they are made more specific and restrictive -- often in response to people being idiots and behaving in an unacceptable manner. Just because the first person to build a car didn't have a driver's license does not mean it's not within the state's police powers to establish driver's licenses. Just because the President previously authorized use of military force without prior blessing of Congress does not mean it is outside of their powers to further regulate his future use of force.

As the U.S. became more interventionist throughout the world, the need to regulate the President's powers became more necessary. Other then some relatively small Naval operations against piracy and similiar interference with American interests, and some more intense but still fairly small messing around in China & Korea along with European powers at the time of forcing open trade with the orient, prior to WWII the U.S. seldom acted outside of the western hemsiphere (Monroe Doctrine). The Phillipines was picked up a bonus from a war fought primarily over western hemisphere territories. Following WWII, the U.S. engaged in actions initiated solely by the President of a scope and scale far beyond any previous precedents. Looking at Korea and Vietnam, the Congress acted to provide rules for the President to follow.

You haven’t helped your case any.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_Act
According to the Insurrection Act in its original form the President can deploy the army and navy of the U.S. when he thinks doing so is necessary to suppress insurrection. This law didn’t give the President any power that the Constitution had not already given him.

In fact the Insurrection Act gives the president a power that the Constitution does not give him: federalizing a state’s militia. According to the Constitution a law is needed to put the militia of a state at the disposal of the federal government. No law is needed in order for the President to deploy the U.S. Army or Navy. The Insurrection Act essentially delegated Congress’s power to call state militias into federal service to the President.

The Insurrection Act does not limit the President’s power, but rather expands his power.

The Posse Comitatus law only prevents the President from using the military to exercise state law-enforcement functions that don’t constitutionally fall within the jurisdiction of the federal government to begin with. Furthermore, the Posse Comitatus law does not negate the Insurrection law. The President can deploy U.S. troops and can federalize a state’s militia when it is necessary to suppress a civil disturbance. President George H. W. Bush did just this in response to the Los Angeles riots in 1992.

In Federalist #69 Alexander Hamilton did not recognize any power on the part of Congress to regulate the conditions under which the president can deploy the army or navy: “President will have only the occasional command of such part of the militia of the nation as by legislative provision may be called into the actual service of the Union.” Thus, according to Hamilton, the President is commander-in-chief of the army and navy at all times without regard to any law or resolution enacted by Congress.

Congress didn’t get upset by Lincoln’s fighting the Civil War for 8 months in 1861 without its expressed consent (Congress wasn’t in session when the traitors fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861 and wasn’t in session until December 1861- by which time Lincoln had called for 75,000 volunteer militiamen and imposed a naval blockade of the South).

And then Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation by using his power as commander-in-chief of the army and navy to present the proclamation as a military order whereby the army and navy had to recognize the freedom of anyone held as a slave in a region under Confederate control. Lincoln did not seek, nor did he need, the consent of Congress to exercise his power as commander-in-chief.

http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/gwf_cruise.htm
And then there was the round-the-world cruise of the Great White Fleet. President Theodore Roosevelt wanted to send a flotilla of 16 U.S. Navy battleships on a world cruise as a show of force aimed mostly at Japan. When Congress learned of the President’s plan the chairman of the Senate Naval Appropriations Committee threatened to withhold the necessary funding. But Roosevelt already had enough money appropriated and he dared the chairman to try to get it back. Once money had been appropriated for the Navy the President did not seek, nor did he need, Congressional approval to use it in accordance with his orders as commander-in-chief.

Likewise the President did not seek and did not need congressional OK to send troops to Korea as long as Congress appropriated the necessary money. Congress didn’t get upset while Truman sent troops to fight the war in Korea. And while many members of Congress and the country at-large were upset when Truman dismissed General Douglas MacArthur, nobody seriously questioned Truman’s power as commander-in-chief to order the dismissal.

The U.S. sent a total of 480,000 troops to Korea and in the course of the war (which lasted 3 years for the U.S.) suffered over 36,000 dead, over 90,000 wounded and over 8,000 MIA.

The U.S. had 553,000 troops in Vietnam in 1969 and over the course of the entire war (which lasted from 1960 to 1973 for the U.S.) had about 58,000 dead, 305,000 wounded and 2,000 MIA. In terms of the casualties in relation to the amount of time involved Korea was ever bit as bad as Vietnam was. If Congress was going to get upset over what you take as the president’s unconstitutional seizure of congressional power, why didn’t it do it over Korea?

You argument doesn’t hold water. You are ignoring the plain facts of history, as so man of your ilk do when it comes to advocating your pet political issues.

You all act like I am some kind of fool when I object to your personal interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. However, I have presented you with cold hard facts from history that shows your interpretation is wrong, while none of you here offer any evidence in support of your personal interpretation of the Constitution.

That's because we all have real lives and have better things to do than argue with people whose education in constitutional history and the law begins and ends with the bibliography from a Wikipedia posting.

Going back to my tomatoes now...

I may very well agree with you but the discussion ended with the inflammatory remark. As one who seldom agrees with Wayne on subjects politically we find ourselves in agreement on a hosts of matters and do so again on this topic - you present yourself as a troll.

Dirt

PS. Never used the ignore feature before! I really was expecting you to be gone by now.