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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elpolvo who wrote (3802)	8/5/2002 3:30:53 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

WHO DECLARES A WAR? nytimes.com Who Declares a War? By JACK RAKOVE Editorial The New York Times STANFORD, Calif. -- Last week's Senate hearings on military action against Iraq mark a welcome step toward maintaining constitutional government in a time of national emergency. But this process will be incomplete if Congress shirks the two fundamental questions it must ultimately face: Can the Bush administration unilaterally decide when to go to war against Iraq without seeking the assent of Congress? And can a Congress in which each party narrowly controls one house effectively discharge its constitutional duties? Since 1973, most discussions about the powers of the executive and Congress on the question of military interventions have been framed by the War Powers Act. That law was designed to prevent presidents from exploiting or creating situations in which Congress would be able only to accede to military actions that had already been taken without its approval. The remedy was to require American forces to withdraw within 60 days, extendable to 90 days, if Congress did not quickly vote its approval. But the debate now unfolding raises a more profound constitutional dilemma than the one Congress addressed in 1973. An invasion of Iraq would amount to war in its fullest scope, in the extent of the preparations required and especially in its object, which involves crushing a regime and its army and liberating a nation. It will not be a humanitarian intervention on the model of Somalia or Kosovo, or a military lark like Grenada or Panama, but an offensive that will reveal far more about the new world order of the 21st century than did our last war against Iraq a decade ago. Perhaps most important, it will not take place suddenly, without advance notice, under conditions that preclude prior Congressional consultation. In the Persian Gulf war, the first Bush administration was poised to act without Congressional approval. In the end, cooler heads prevailed, and approval was sought and granted. But prominent members of both Bush administrations seem to regard that gesture as superfluous. The current administration has not yet stated its view. But its unilateralist attitude on foreign relations and the war on terrorism may well carry over to its policies on Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney, in particular, has long held that there is an "inherent presidential power to act" in defense of "vital national interests" that "comes directly from the Constitution and not from Congress." Yet the Constitution offers very little support to this view. Most of the national security powers — for example, the power to raise and support an army — that the Constitution vests in the national government are delegated to Congress, not the president. Nor does the maddeningly brief debate of August 17, 1787, when the framers substituted "to declare war" for "to make war" in the clause establishing Congressional war power, support the idea that the president can unilaterally initiate hostilities. As James Madison noted, the president retains the power to repel sudden attacks when it would be absurd to wait for Congress to assemble. Once the nation is attacked — as at Pearl Harbor — it is at war, and a Congressional declaration only facilitates its conduct. Had the Constitution's framers viewed executive power generously, they would have allowed the president, not Congress, to grant letters of marque and reprisal. We no longer charter private boat owners to prey on enemy shipping. Yet letters of marque and reprisal are the closest 18th-century analogue to the methods of retaliation that might be used in the low intensity conflicts that the War Powers Act sought to regulate. The fact that the framers withheld even this minimal power from the president shows their reservations about unrestrained executive war-making. Finally, the case for unilateral presidential authority loses all force when our intention to take military action has already been declared far in advance. Nothing in the Constitution or the history of its adoption suggests that a president can carry the nation into war when Congress has time for deliberation. Were President Bush to launch a massive attack on Iraq during Congress's August recess on the general ground that Saddam Hussein is a menace, it is a fair bet that the framers would have regarded impeachment, rather than a vote of thanks, as the appropriate response when Congress returned. Of course, a sense of constitutional duty alone does not necessarily give Congress the confidence and backbone to insist that a military action of this nature must receive its prior approval. Republicans have a natural inclination to support giving President Bush broad authority, and Democrats a natural caution about challenging a popular president on major questions of national security. Yet this is clearly a time when members of both parties in Congress must take their constitutional duties seriously. For in the open-ended emergency that looms before us, the abdication of Congressional responsibility risks erasing every constitutional standard against which the military decisions of any president can be judged. If an invasion of Iraq on the scale contemplated does not represent a decision for war within the meaning of the Constitution, it is hard to imagine any other military action that would ever again be subject to Congressional approval or restraint. *********** Jack Rakove is a professor of history and political science at Stanford University and the author of "Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution."

To: elpolvo who wrote (3802)	8/5/2002 12:54:20 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Americans respond to hunger, but injustice? By MARY MCGRORY SYNDICATED COLUMNIST Monday, August 5, 2002 WASHINGTON -- It isn't every day we hear that doing right means also doing well in politics. But the Alliance to End World Hunger has brought us just such a message in the form of a poll showing that Americans care deeply that some of their countrymen are hungry and that others around the world are starving, and that they will vote for candidates who agree with them. Three political consultants, Democrats Bill Knapp and Tom Freedman and Republican Jim McLaughlin, conducted a survey of more than 1,000 likely voters to find out the good news. The poll was commissioned by David Beckman, president of Bread for the World, an organization that takes the position that no one should go hungry. Surprisingly, 92.7 percent of the voters considered fighting hunger "an important issue," and 48.5 percent said it was "very important," meaning they would vote on it. The figures are reassuring at a time when isolationism, known currently as "unilateralism," is making a comeback. The United States is busy emphasizing its uniqueness. President Bush has been vehemently opposing an International Criminal Court despite the fact that his fellow Americans think well of the United Nations. Sixty-nine percent declare "positive impressions." The pollsters provide a good profile of kind-hearted and pragmatic Americans. They want to feed the hungry at home and abroad because, as 59.14 percent put it, "It is the moral and right thing to do." They do not want to be merely bleeding hearts, but want to show the needy how to help themselves by learning better farming. Americans think that a combination of government and non-governmental agencies works best in delivering the food where it is needed most. They also feel that the United Nations does a better job than we do in famine relief. Beckman organized a coalition of 26 "international partners" to participate in the project. His purpose? "To move the issue of hunger from the church basement to the White House." He had a hunch about the potential political nourishment lurking in the hunger problem, but he was agreeably startled by its robust margins. Beckman thinks that American attitudes toward foreign aid -- once the "rat hole" of rabid right-wing rhetoric -- have shifted markedly since Sept. 11. "They have been thinking again about what is really important." If world hunger has made a significant penetration in the U.S. conscience, international law is a loser. A proposal for an International Criminal Court went down by a vote of 75 to 19 in the Senate. The Bush administration has been merrily demagoging the issue since May 6, when our ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, formally withdrew from the treaty. Bill Clinton, in the face of much flak from the Pentagon, had reluctantly signed the treaty on his last day in office, while noting its flaws. George Bush, made aware of right-wing opposition, announced with satisfaction that he was "de-signing" the treaty, which had the ardent support of our European allies, particularly Great Britain. Our neighbor to the north, Canada, is equally keen. While both those staunch allies have been too polite to say so out loud, they have conveyed their disappointment in our stance that American servicemen just doing their duty would be at the mercy of villainous international shysters seeking to take out their resentment and envy of the world's only superpower by railroading our GIs into jail. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., made an impassioned plea before the Senate Appropriations Committee for us to join the rest of the world in extending the rule of law. "Finally, the world stands up. We have been begging to do it for half a century. Any individual who commits genocide or crimes against humanity will be on notice that they will be prosecuted for those crimes." But Bush was adamant. The United States was different, special -- not like any other nation on Earth. We would withdraw our soldiers from peacekeeping in Bosnia -- and elsewhere -- if the U.N. Security Council failed to take note of our difference. The Security Council gave in. For one year, we were not like anyone else. President Bush got a big cheer from soldiers at Fort Drum when he gloated that he had saved "our military from international courts and committees with agendas of their own." Dodd pleaded with his colleagues to take up the cause of extending the rule of law. He begged Republicans to "be a Vandenberg" -- that is, follow the Michigan Republican who helped Harry Truman devise the Marshall Plan while World War II wounds were still open. He got nowhere. The United States will give strangers tons of wheat, but those hungry for justice may have to wait longer. We won't give up an ounce of our sovereignty. -------------------------------------------------- Mary McGrory is a columnist with The Washington Post. Copyright 2002 The Washington Post. seattlepi.nwsource.com

To: elpolvo who wrote (3802)	8/8/2002 12:42:45 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Double standard on bankruptcy By Robert Kuttner Columnist The Boston Globe 8/7/2002 WITH ALL the corporate and accounting scandals, you may have noticed that Congress is also working on bankruptcy reform legislation. A bill nearly passed last week and will probably be approved when Congress returns in September. However, this is precisely the wrong kind of reform. It is a measure long sought by the banking industry to make it easier to squeeze money from ordinary individuals who declare bankruptcy after facing personal hard times or being overwhelmed by debt. Often these are individuals facing catastrophic illnesses or personal financial reverses. Sometimes they are people who ran up too much consumer debt, but in these buying binges the credit card companies are willing coconspirators. They foist credit cards on college kids with no visible means of support save parents. They encourage people to run up debts with multiple cards. Why? In a low-interest-rate environment, lenders love those 20 percent, Mafia-style interest rates that many consumers foolishly pay, and creditors gladly take the occasional default as a cost of doing business. But in an economic downturn, the credit card companies fear real losses. Hence they want to get tough after the fact. Under the bill written by the financial services industry, consumers who went bankrupt, rather than having a clean slate, would still be liable for a portion of credit card and other debt. Economists use the term ''moral hazard'' in describing a deal so sweet that it encourages the beneficiary to break the law or to sacrifice ordinary prudence. For example, if a landlord is allowed to insure his rundown building for three times its worth, there is a risk that he may be tempted to set it on fire. The credit card people like to say that easy bankruptcies create a moral hazard for consumers running up excessive debts. But the real moral hazard is the one perpetrated when purveyors of credit throw caution to the winds. Weirdly, the only thing delaying the passage of this Scrooge legislation is an entirely extraneous controversy about abortion. One version of the bill includes an amendment making it impossible for anti-abortion thugs who damaged clinics or intimidated or harmed individuals to wriggle out of damage awards by declaring personal bankruptcy. The anti-abortion lobby considers this an outrage and has been blocking the bill. Meanwhile, the corporate guys keep declaring bankruptcy at record rates and for record sums. Even the Archdiocese of Boston is threatening bankruptcy if too many Catholics sexually abused by priests collect settlements. Does anyone notice a double standard here? The logic of a business bankruptcy is to allow an orderly process so that old debts can be settled at so many cents on the dollar and the viable parts of the business can be rescued. What is galling under the circumstances is that the law allows the same scoundrels who ran the business into the ground to stay in charge of it after fleecing workers, shareholders, and creditors. It doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes the business is broken up and sold off to pay debts and to leave its viable parts to take on new life under new owners. But increasingly, declaring bankruptcy is seen as just another business strategy to ''clean up balance sheets'' (i.e., stiff creditors) while the business and its executives keep merrily running along. The real abusers of the bankruptcy process are less individuals than outfits like Enron and Adelphia. The fact that Congress is on the verge of passing a bankruptcy bill that goes after consumers and ignores corporations speaks volumes about who is really running the country. The credit card companies and their banker-partners have poured millions in campaign contributions into a willing Congress, and the measure has the support of many Democrats as well as Republicans. If Congress were serious about addressing bankruptcy reform, it would scrap the proposed special interest legislation for the credit card industry and pass a bill requiring that whenever a business goes bankrupt it must get new ownership. That might remove a lot of moral hazard and deter frivolous bankruptcies. It would remove bankruptcy from the list of tactics that leave incumbent management largely unscathed. When an outfit goes bankrupt and harms a lot of innocent people who did business with it in good faith, the captain should go down with the ship. ___________________________________ Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. boston.com