Bill introduced. Acts of war without congress' approval impeachable high crime

This is sooo cute! Oh and completely useless. The hard truth is that THERE IS NO CONSTITUTION. Theses warpigs can and will do whatever they want. Congress cannot stop them. The citizenry WILL NOT stop them. And they know these things very very well. No sense in bitching. No one will do what it takes. They're too afraid.

reply to post by sageofmonticello


You make a good point. It wasn't until an earlier response called me out on the same that I realized he was right. I think I was confusing that with recess appointments, which Obama has done as well. Damn, I don't like where this all seems to be heading...

40 years late.

The current laws, and our constitution are ignored. I do not think this new law would be followed either.


U

Wow, that is the shortest, clearest legislation I have ever seen. I actually can 100% agree that this would be a good thing, unlike almost all the other sleazigistration they write.

reply to post by R_Clark


Its a bit longer than that.

Ok it gets a bit tricky as the last was that had a congressional Declaration of War was WWII.

Almost all of the other "fighting" is considered Military engagements authorized by Congress or the UN security council.

So I have to give up on the timer thing, but I think it goes as far back as Vietnam.


my source: en.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by calnorak
Wow, that is the shortest, clearest legislation I have ever seen. I actually can 100% agree that this would be a good thing, unlike almost all the other sleazigistration they write.

From here:-

Rule of Clarity: Clarity is better than cleverness.

Because maintenance is so important and so expensive, write programs as if the most important communication they do is not to the computer that executes them but to the human beings who will read and maintain the source code in the future (including yourself).

In the Unix tradition, the implications of this advice go beyond just commenting your code. Good Unix practice also embraces choosing your algorithms and implementations for future maintainability. Buying a small increase in performance with a large increase in the complexity and obscurity of your technique is a bad trade — not merely because complex code is more likely to harbor bugs, but also because complex code will be harder to read for future maintainers.

Code that is graceful and clear, on the other hand, is less likely to break — and more likely to be instantly comprehended by the next person to have to change it. This is important, especially when that next person might be yourself some years down the road.

...

Rule of Simplicity: Design for simplicity; add complexity only where you must.

Many pressures tend to make programs more complicated (and therefore more expensive and buggy). One such pressure is technical machismo. Programmers are bright people who are (often justly) proud of their ability to handle complexity and juggle abstractions. Often they compete with their peers to see who can build the most intricate and beautiful complexities. Just as often, their ability to design outstrips their ability to implement and debug, and the result is expensive failure.

Even more often (at least in the commercial software world) excessive complexity comes from project requirements that are based on the marketing fad of the month rather than the reality of what customers want or software can actually deliver. Many a good design has been smothered under marketing's pile of “checklist features” — features that, often, no customer will ever use. And a vicious circle operates; the competition thinks it has to compete with chrome by adding more chrome. Pretty soon, massive bloat is the industry standard and everyone is using huge, buggy programs not even their developers can love.

Either way, everybody loses in the end.

The only way to avoid these traps is to encourage a software culture that knows that small is beautiful, that actively resists bloat and complexity: an engineering tradition that puts a high value on simple solutions, that looks for ways to break program systems up into small cooperating pieces, and that reflexively fights attempts to gussy up programs with a lot of chrome (or, even worse, to design programs around the chrome).

That would be a culture a lot like Unix's.

It may sound insane, but as far as I am concerned, the American Constitution can be viewed in engineering terms, as the design specification for a society. As such, it adheres to these rules; and if it is in turn adhered to, a robust social organism will be the result.

The American political engine is no longer using the Constitution as its' spec. It has instead adopted a different one, which is outlined here.

The central problem with fascism is that it is designed around a number of erroneous assumptions, and hence is not stable, long term. Some of the early and intermediate stages of its' lifecycle can actually have fairly positive social effects, which is the reason why it is advocated; it is only really in the later stages that real problems develop.

Fascism is not based on a stable re-iterative loop, but is intead based on a series of shifting, dynamic conditions moving towards a terminal condition.

We don't need a Bill for this and the fact is, the President does not need anyone's permission to send the military anywhere he likes. Congress only has the power to approve the funding any military action the President chooses. Here's the catch 22...

The President can use our defense budget to send our troops anywhere in the world at anytime without even notifying anyone, he is the Commander in Chief, Congress can only cut him off after 90 days but by that time generally, if Congress does cut funding they will have made themselves look like villains who don't care about the harm cutting funding puts our troops in.

All of this is done of course for our benefit, to keep the illusion of a two party system alive to keep us fighting amongst ourselves.

The solution of course is easy for Congress, if they actually were against any military strike they would openly challenge the President by notifying him that funding will not come at the end of the 90 days. That way they would be putting the President in the situation I talked about above, it would be him putting our troops excessively in harms way. Of course there's no laws that state we can't get funding from NATO.

So really, we're pretty much screwed. The Military Industrial Complex, funded by our tax dollars and corporate dollars (ironically also via our tax dollars), lines enough pockets in Washington to do whatever it wants anywhere in the world it wants. The bickering in Washington over it is only meant to keep you from seeing that.

Wake up.

But Obama isn't the president of these United states. He's a president of THE CORPORATE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT. He doesn't have to answer to the constitution nor represent it, and he and congress never will.
We have been w/o a constitutional government since the 1st tyrant president Abe Lincoln.

Originally posted by Surfrat
reply to post by Xcathdra

 

Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution, sometimes referred to as the War Powers Clause, vests in the Congress the power to declare war, in the following wording:
[Congress shall have Power...] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

Congress can declare happy fun time and it would be valid. The actual term war does not need to be used. Hence the AUMF for Afghanistan and the AUMF for Iraq.

You do realize this law wouldn't get voted in by Republicans either? Do you actually think war will stop around the world if America stops promoting freedom by using force where its needed? If the rest of the world was peaceful I would agree with you. But right now I am so mad at all of you anti warsies I wish you would die.. I can't wait until WWIII where I might finally get a crack at you. All of you are genetic experiments gone wrong. Our world should be more picky about who has children to improve our genetics. Instead we have a bunch of diseased fat idiots whose fat could be used to make soap that feels really good. That's why you're here!

reply to post by Monsatan


Our congress is bought out by private businesses..The people should vote on a declaration of war ONLY if the cause is in the best interest of the American people themselves. I'm sorry, I do not trust our federal government and their inefficiency to preserve liberty and serve us.

reply to post by sgspecial19


I was thinking about this the other day...exactly this, that the people should vote on whether to involve our military in anything as well as having direct democracy for some of our most major issues we face as a nation. But I also worry how susceptible we are to propaganda.

Originally posted by Kali74

I was thinking about this the other day...exactly this, that the people should vote on whether to involve our military in anything as well as having direct democracy for some of our most major issues we face as a nation.

Have you ever watched those "man on the street" interviews in which average Americans display absolute ignorance on most topics - everything from the constitution, law, to politics and especially world geography? Would you really want to make US foreign policy subject to the whim of the majority?

Most Americans should have their voting rights stripped away as a danger to themselves and others. A vote in the hands of an ignorant or uninformed person is more dangerous than a handgun ever would be.

Originally posted by Kali74

But I also worry how susceptible we are to propaganda.

It is shocking the amount of misinformation the public falls for on a daily basis.

reply to post by Golf66


Those man on the street interviews are worse than polls in my opinion. How many people do they have to ask before finding the idiots?

It's hilarious on Leno but at least he does it openly.

It's obvious that a lot of people have been asleep or we wouldn't be in the mess we're in but, it's also obvious we're waking up.

Originally posted by seagull
reply to post by LittleBlackEagle

 

I believe you are correct...it is ninety days, I think. To give a President leeway to act, but not unilaterally for the length of an actual war...

Yes 90 days for military action. Beyond that needs approval from Congress.

Originally posted by Kali74
reply to post by Golf66

 

It's obvious that a lot of people have been asleep or we wouldn't be in the mess we're in but, it's also obvious we're waking up.

I don't really define it as being asleep, personally. I look at it more in terms of the majority of the population being non-psychopathic and (relatively) positively/altruistically oriented. Because of that, however, the public made the terrible mistake of assuming that the individuals who sought leadership positions in society were equally positive and altruistic themselves; so because the public assumed that the political leadership were non-psychopathic, they then also assumed that they didn't need to be concerned with administrative issues themselves, because it would be taken care of.

From my perspective, that is the most difficult part of "waking people up."

It's getting them to the point where they are willing to understand that on a systemic level, political science and economics both exist exclusively by and for psychopaths, and that neither areas of human activity are fundamentally necessary or productive, provided that the individual is willing to become sovereign.

They usually don't want to accept that, because the truth about the political and economic system genuinely is horrible. I'm not going to deny that; but the point is that if you're willing to accept the horrible part of it, (the problem) the part of it which comes after that, (the solution) isn't horrible at all. It's wonderful.

The bill is not needed. It will not pass. It is nothing more than a "warning shot" by congress that was told 2 days ago that it has no power. Congress doesn't like losing it's perks and power trip. Congress did this to warn them not to take away their power. It's a bluff at best.

reply to post by petrus4


I agree to a point, mostly because I thought as much as well. I saw a few here and there that scared me in the sense I thought they were just evil people and wanted to do harm, but overall thought people got into politics because they wanted to make America a better place, even if our definitions of better were different. I still get shocked every day, that this isn't so. But we can't use that as an excuse, we were warned in the beginning that we must always be vigilant and we weren't, we dropped the ball. I don't think it's too late to come back though.

reply to post by IntelRetard


No, beyond 90 days the President doesn't need permission from Congress, he needs funding approval.