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Pastimes : THE SLIGHTLY MODERATED BOXING RING -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (14789)	6/13/2002 2:27:14 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

So there is nothing authorizing other than a FUNDING bill to authorize the use of troops???? That's a slightly different question. The Funding is the action since 9-11 that authorizes the effort. The other document that you might pull up is the War Powers Act. The War Powers act does give the Pres certain powers for military action in a broad sense. I can note that in a conversation that I had once with a Senate staffer on it, I mentioned that document we called the Constitution and Congress abrogating it's responsibility under said document. The response I got, was ....welllll, there are members of the Senate that do question the Constitutionality of the War Powers Act and there does seem to be a consensus in the Senate, that no one really knows what a USSC decision would conclude. No one wants to challenge it in the Courts. Since then, we've had the USSC decision on the line-item veto. Where the Court ruled that the Legislative body cannot abrogate their Constitutional authority or responsibilities through legislative action. Had members of Congress not challenged the line-item veto to the USSC, we would have it today. So the Pres is authorized to take military action under the War Powers Act; the mechanism of supporting it is Funding. The Court can't rule on the Constitutionality of that, unless someone challenges, and no one has. And the nature of the case says that only members of Congress could challenge it. If you or I attempted to submit it to the Court, the Court would refuse to hear the case, since it's not our Constitutionality authority that is in question. Or am I a hopeless romantic? I think so. The Constitution as a document doesn't preclude Un-Constitutional actions. There have been many cases of Un-Consitutional actions; the Court's docket is full with them. Somone has to make an appeal before the Court. Then there's no guarantee that the Court will 'correctly' interpret the Constitution; there's historic evidence of that. Then there's the small matter that the Court has no enforcement ability. There's been at least one President that made that point. The Court couldn't enforce "Separate but equal", so they tried something else. That wasn't enforceable by the Court either, but you had an Administration that was willing to enforce it for the Court. Was the interment of the Japanese and Japanese-Americans Constitutional? The Constitution is a darn fine document. But it requires cooperation on the part of the other branches. jttmab