April 06, 2011
A prominent libertarian constitutional lawyer and civil
libertarian has drafted an article of
impeachment against President Obama over his attack on Libya, throwing down a legal gauntlet that could be picked up by some
Congressional Republicans
Bruce Fein, a former Reagan administration official in
the Department of
Justice and chairman of American
Freedom Agenda writes in his 15-page argument of Obama's course that "Barack
Hussein Obama has mocked the rule of law, endangered the very existence of the
Republic and the liberties of the people, and perpetrated an impeachable high
crime and misdemeanor."
Fein is a small-government conservative who worked on
the impeachment of President Bill Clinton and also called for the impeachment of
President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and his work doesn't
represent the Republican Party line. But it comes as some Republicans on the
Hill, led by Senator Rand Paul, object vociferously to Obama's decision to
strike targets in Libya without Congressional authorization.
"He's been
more bold than any other president," said Fein, who said Obama has failed to
secure congressional approval for his military action in a much more brazen way
than previous administrations.
"If he can wipe out the war powers
authorization, why can't he wipe out Congress's authority to spend?" asked Fein.
" If we're going to be a government of laws, and not descend into empire, this
is Caesar crossing the Rubicon."
Fein said a number of Congressional
offices have expressed interest in his proposal.
"They actually need to
defend constitutional prerogatives," said Fein. "There's definitely been
interest on the Hill. There's at least two dozen who have been open to the idea
that this is a serious constitutional crisis."
Fein's articles of impeachment discuss the run-up to the
Libya conflict and conclude, "In all of this, President Barack Obama has acted
in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional
government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the
manifest injury of the people of the United States."
The article of impeachment and three subsections are
after the jump.
(with Byron Tau)
ARTICLE OF IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN
OBAMA
RESOLVED, That Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United
States, is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following
article of impeachment to be exhibited to the Senate:
ARTICLE OF
IMPEACHMENT EXHIBITED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA IN THE NAME OF ITSELF AND OF ALL OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA, AGAINST BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA, IN MAINTENANCE AND SUPPORT OF ITS IMPEACHMENT AGAINST HIM FOR HIGH
CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS IN USURPING THE EXCLUSIVE PREROGATIVE OF CONGRESS TO
COMENCE WAR UNDER ARTICLE 1, SECTION 8, CLAUSE 11 OF THE CONSTITUTION.
ARTICLE I
In his conduct of the office of President of the United
States, Barack Hussein Obama, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully
to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his
ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,
and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be
faithfully executed, has usurped the exclusive power of Congress to initiate war
under Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the United States Constitution by
unilaterally commencing war against the Republic of Libya on March 19, 2011,
declaring that Congress is powerless to constrain his conduct of the war, and
claiming authority in the future to commence war unilaterally to advance
whatever he ordains is in the national interest. By so doing and declaring,
Barack Hussein Obama has mocked the rule of law, endangered the very existence
of the Republic and the liberties of the people, and perpetrated an impeachable
high crime and misdemeanor as hereinafter elaborated.
I.
THE
IMPEACHMENT POWER
1. Article II, Section IV of the United States
Constitution provides: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of
the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and
Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and
Misdemeanors.”
2. According to James Madison’s Records of the Convention,
2:550; Madison, 8 Sept., Mr. George Mason objected to an initial proposal to
confine impeachable offenses to treason or bribery:
Why is the provision
restrained to Treason & bribery only? Treason as defined in the Constitution
will not reach many great and dangerous offences. Hastings is not guilty of
Treason. Attempts to subvert the Constitution may not be Treason as above
defined--As bills of attainder which have saved the British Constitution are
forbidden, it is the more necessary to extend: the power of impeachments.
3. Delegates to the Federal Convention voted overwhelmingly to include
“high crimes and misdemeanors” in Article II, Section IV of the United States
Constitution specifically to ensure that “attempts to subvert the Constitution”
would fall within the universe of impeachable offences. Id.
4. Alexander
Hamilton, a delegate to the Federal Convention, characterized impeachable
offenses in Federalist 65 as, “offenses which proceed from the misconduct of
public men, or in other words, from the violation or abuse of some public trust.
They are of a nature which with peculiar propriety may be denominated political,
as they relate chiefly to injuries done to society itself.”
5. In 1974,
the House Judiciary Committee voted three articles of impeachment against then
President Richard M. Nixon for actions “subversive of constitutional
government.”
6. Father of the Constitution, James Madison, observed
that, “Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be
dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other…. War is the
true nurse of executive aggrandizement.”
7. James Madison also
instructed that “no nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual
warfare.”
8. The exclusive congressional power to commence war under
Article I, section VIII, clause XI of the Constitution is the pillar of the
Republic and the greatest constitutional guarantor of individual liberty,
transparency, and government frugality.
II.
THE “DECLARE WAR”
CLAUSE
9. Article I, Section VIII, Clause XI of the United States
Constitution provides: “The Congress shall have the power … To declare War,
grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land
and Water;”
10. Article II, Section II, Clause I of the United States
Constitution provides: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army
and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when
called into the actual Service of the United States.”
11. The authors of
the United States Constitution manifestly intended Article I, Section VIII,
Clause XI to fasten exclusive responsibility and authority on the Congress to
decide whether to undertake offensive military action.
12. The authors of
the United States Constitution believed that individual liberty and the Republic
would be endangered by fighting too many wars, not too few.
13. The
authors of the United States Constitution understood that to aggrandize power
and to leave a historical legacy, the executive in all countries chronically
inflates danger manifold to justify warfare.
14. John Jay, the first
Chief Justice of the United States, in Federalist 4 noted:
[A]bsolute
monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but
for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory,
revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or
support their particular families or partisans. These and a variety of other
motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage
in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his
people.
15. Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 69 that the
president's Commander-in-Chief authority
…would be nominally the same
with that of the King of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It
would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the
military and naval forces, as first general and admiral of the confederacy;
while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war, and to the
raising and regulating of fleets and armies; all which by the constitution under
consideration would appertain to the Legislature.
16. In a written
exchange with Alexander Hamilton under the pseudonym Helvidius, James Madison
wrote:
In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than
in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature,
and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture to
heterogeneous powers, the trust and the temptation would be too great for any
one man; not such as nature may offer as the prodigy of many centuries, but such
as may be expected in the ordinary successions of magistracy. War is in fact the
true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be
created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it. In war, the public
treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense
them. In war, the honours and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it
is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war,
finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are
to encircle. The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human
breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honourable or venial love of fame, are
all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.
17. James Madison
also wrote as Helvidius to Alexander Hamilton:
Those who are to conduct
a war cannot in the nature of things, be proper or safe judges, whether a war
ought to be commenced, continued, or concluded. They are barred from the latter
functions by a great principle in free government, analogous to that which
separates the sword from the purse, or the power of executing from the power of
enacting laws.
18. On June 29, 1787, at the Federal Convention, James
Madison explained that an executive crowned with war powers invites tyranny and
the reduction of citizens to vassalage:
In time of actual war, great
discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant
apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the
body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be
safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been
always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing
maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe,
the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the
people.
19. In a letter dated April 4, 1798, James Madison wrote to
Thomas Jefferson:
The constitution supposes, what the History of all
Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most
interested in war, & most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care,
vested the question of war in the Legislature. But the Doctrines lately advanced
strike at the root of all these provisions, and will deposit the peace of the
Country in that Department which the Constitution distrusts as most ready
without cause to renounce it. For if the opinion of the President not the facts
& proofs themselves are to sway the judgment of Congress, in declaring war,
and if the President in the recess of Congress create a foreign mission, appoint
the minister, & negociate a War Treaty, without the possibility of a check
even from the Senate, untill the measures present alternatives overruling the
freedom of its judgment; if again a Treaty when made obliges the Legislature to
declare war contrary to its judgment, and in pursuance of the same doctrine, a
law declaring war, imposes a like moral obligation, to grant the requisite
supplies until it be formally repealed with the consent of the President &
Senate, it is evident that the people are cheated out of the best ingredients in
their Government, the safeguards of peace which is the greatest of their
blessings.
20. During the Pennsylvania Convention to ratify the
Constitution, James Wilson, a future Justice of the United States Supreme Court,
observed:
This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to
guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body
of men, to involve us in such distress; for the important power of declaring war
is vested in the legislature at large: this declaration must he made with the
concurrence of the House of Representatives: from this circumstance we may draw
a certain conclusion that nothing but our national interest can draw us into a
war.
21. In 1793, President George Washington, who presided over the
Federal Convention, wrote to South Carolina Governor William Moultrie in regards
to a prospective counter-offensive against the American Indian Creek Nation:
"The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress, therefore no
offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they have
deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure."
22.
President Thomas Jefferson, who served as Secretary of State under President
Washington, in a statement before Congress regarding Tripoli and the Barbary
Pirates, deemed himself “unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction
of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense." He amplified: "I communicate [to
the Congress] all material information on this subject, that in the exercise of
this important function confided by the Constitution to the Legislature
exclusively their judgment may form itself on a knowledge and consideration of
every circumstance of weight."
23. In a message to Congress in December,
1805 regarding potential military action to resolve a border dispute with Spain,
President Thomas Jefferson acknowledged that "Congress alone is constitutionally
invested with the power of changing our condition from peace to war, I have
thought it my duty to await their authority for using force.” He requested
Congressional authorization for offensive military action, even short of war,
elaborating:
Formal war is not necessary—it is not probable it will
follow; but the protection of our citizens, the spirit and honor of our country,
require that force should be interposed to a certain degree. It will probably
contribute to advance the object of peace.
But the course to be pursued
will require the command of means which it belongs to Congress exclusively to
yield or deny. To them I communicate every fact material for their information,
and the documents necessary to enable them to judge for themselves. To their
wisdom, then, I look for the course I am to pursue; and will pursue, with
sincere zeal, that which they shall approve.
24. In his War Message to
Congress on June 1, 1812, President James Madison reaffirmed that the shift in
language from make to declare in Article I, Section VIII, Clause XI of the
United States Constitution authorized at the Constitutional convention did not
empower the Executive to involve the United States military in any action aside
from defense against an overt attack. Although President Madison was convinced
that Great Britain had undertaken acts of war against the United States, he
nevertheless maintained that he could not respond with military force without
congressional authorization. He proclaimed:
We behold, in fine, on the
side of Great Britain, a state of war against the United States, and on the side
of the United States a state of peace toward Great Britain.
Whether the
United States shall continue passive under these progressive usurpations and
these accumulating wrongs, or, opposing force to force in defense of their
national rights, shall commit a just cause into the hands of the Almighty
Disposer of Events, avoiding all connections which might entangle it in the
contest or views of other powers, and preserving a constant readiness to concur
in an honorable re-establishment of peace and friendship, is a solemn question
which the Constitution wisely confides to the legislative department of the
Government. In recommending it to their early deliberations I am happy in the
assurance that the decision will be worthy the enlightened and patriotic
councils of a virtuous, a free, and a powerful nation.
25. In his Records
of the Convention, 2:318; Madison, 17 Aug., James Madison wrote that the power
“To declare war” had been vested in the Congress in lieu of the power “To make
war” to leave to the Executive “the power to repel sudden attacks.”
26.
Mr. Elbridge Gerry “never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the
Executive alone to declare war,” but still moved with Mr. Madison “to insert
declare—in place of make” in Article I, Section VIII, Clause XI. Id.
27.
Mr. George Mason was against “giving the power of war to the Executive, because
not safely to be trusted with it; or to the Senate, because not so constructed
as to be entitled to it. He was for clogging rather than facilitating war; but
for facilitating peace.” Yet Mr. Mason “preferred declare to make.”
Id.
28. Mr. Roger Sherman “thought [the proposal] stood very well. The
Executive shd. be able to repel and not to commence war.” Id.
29.
Delegates to the Federal Convention overwhelmingly approved the motion to insert
“declare—in place of make,” to deny the Executive power to initiate military
action, but to permit the Executive to repel sudden attacks unilaterally.
Id.
30. Then Congressman Abraham Lincoln sermonized:
Allow the
President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to
repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he
deems it necessary for such purpose — and you allow him to make war at
pleasure…. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect,
after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to
say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from
invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, "I see no probability
of the British invading us" but he will say to you "be silent; I see it, if you
don't."
The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to
Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had
always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending
generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our
Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and
they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power
of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter,
and places our President where kings have always stood.
31. Crowning the
President with unilateral authority to commence war under the banner of
anticipatory self-defense, prevention of civilian slaughters, gender
discrimination, subjugation of ethnic or religious minorities, or otherwise
would empower the President to initiate war without limit, threatening the very
existence of the Republic. Although a benevolent Chief Executive might resist
abuse of an unlimited war power, the principle, if ever accepted by Congress,
would lie around like a loaded weapon ready for use by any successor craving
absolute power.
32. Thomas Paine justly and rightly declared in Common
Sense that "in America, the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King
is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no
other."
33. Article 43 Paragraph 3 of the Charter of the United Nations
provides that all resolutions or agreements of the United Nations Security
Counsel “shall be subject to ratification by the signatory states in accordance
with their respective constitutional processes.”
34. Article 43 Paragraph
3 of Charter of the United Nations was included specifically to allay concerns
that prevented the United States of America from ratifying the League of Nations
Treaty in 1919.
35. That treaty risked crowning the President with the
counter-constitutional authority to initiate warfare. On November 19, 1919, in
Section II of his Reservations with Regard to Ratification of the Versailles
Treaty, to preserve the balance of power established by the United States
Constitution from executive usurpation, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge resolved as
follows:
The United States assumes no obligation to preserve the
territorial integrity or political independence of any other country or to
interfere in controversies between nations -- whether members of the League or
not -- under the provisions of Article 10, or to employ the military or naval
forces of the United States under any article of the treaty for any purpose,
unless in any particular case the Congress, which, under the Constitution, has
the sole power to declare war or authorize the employment of the military or
naval forces of the United States, shall by act or joint resolution so
provide.
The rejection of Lodge’s reservations by President Woodrow
Wilson and his Senate allies insured defeat of the treaty.
36. Section
2(c) of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 clarifies Presidential authority to
undertake military action as follows:
The constitutional powers of the
President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into
hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is
clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a
declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national
emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or
possessions, or its armed forces.
37. In United States v. Smith, 27 F.
Cas. 1192 (1806), Supreme Court Justice William Paterson, a delegate to the
Federal Convention from New Jersey, wrote on behalf of a federal circuit
court:
There is a manifest distinction between our going to war with a
nation at peace, and a war being made against us by an actual invasion, or a
formal declaration. In the former case it is the exclusive province of Congress
to change a state of peace into a state of war.
38. In Geofroy v. Riggs,
133 U.S. 258, 267 (1890), the Supreme Court of the United States
held:
The treaty power, as expressed in the Constitution, is in terms
unlimited except by those restraints which are found in that instrument against
the action of the government or of its departments, and those arising from the
nature of the government itself and of that of the States. It would not be
contended that it extends so far as to authorize what the Constitution forbids,
or a change in the character of the government, or in that of one of the States,
or a cession of any portion of the territory of the latter, without its
consent.
39. In his concurrence in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v.
Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 642-643 (1952), which rebuked President Harry Truman’s
claim of unilateral war powers in the Korean War, Justice Robert Jackson
elaborated:
Nothing in our Constitution is plainer than that declaration
of a war is entrusted only to Congress. Of course, a state of war may in fact
exist without a formal declaration. But no doctrine that the Court could
promulgate would seem to me more sinister and alarming than that a President
whose conduct of foreign affairs is so largely uncontrolled, and often even is
unknown, can vastly enlarge his mastery over the internal affairs of the country
by his own commitment of the Nation's armed forces to some foreign
venture.
40. All treaties are subservient to the exclusive
congressional power to commence war. In Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1, 18 (1957),
the United States Supreme Court held:
There is nothing in [the
Constitution’s text] which intimates that treaties and laws enacted pursuant to
them do not have to comply with the provisions of the Constitution. Nor is there
anything in the debates which accompanied the drafting and ratification of the
Constitution which even suggests such a result.
41. Unconstitutional
usurpations by one branch of government of powers entrusted to a coequal branch
are not rendered constitutional by repetition. The United States Supreme Court
held unconstitutional hundreds of laws enacted by Congress over the course of
five decades that included a legislative veto of executive actions in INS v.
Chada, 462 U.S. 919 (1982).
42. In their dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld,
542 U.S. 507 (2004), Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia recognized
the “Founders’ general distrust of military power lodged with the President,
including the authority to commence war:
No fewer than 10 issues of the
Federalist were devoted in whole or part to allaying fears of oppression from
the proposed Constitution’s authorization of standing armies in peacetime. Many
safeguards in the Constitution reflect these concerns. Congress's authority
"[t]o raise and support Armies" was hedged with the proviso that "no
Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years."
U.S. Const., Art. 1, §8, cl. 12. Except for the actual command of military
forces, all authorization for their maintenance and all explicit authorization
for their use is placed in the control of Congress under Article I, rather than
the President under Article II. As Hamilton explained, the President's military
authority would be "much inferior" to that of the British King… (Citing
Federalist 69, Supra.)
43. On December 20, 2007, then Senator Hillary
Clinton proclaimed: "The President has the solemn duty to defend our Nation. If
the country is under truly imminent threat of attack, of course the President
must take appropriate action to defend us. At the same time, the Constitution
requires Congress to authorize war. I do not believe that the President can take
military action — including any kind of strategic bombing — against Iran without
congressional authorization."
44. Then Senator Joseph Biden stated in a
speech at the Iowa City Public Library in 2007 regarding potential military
action in Iran that unilateral action by the President would be an impeachable
offense under the Constitution:
It is precisely because the consequences
of war – intended or otherwise – can be so profound and complicated that our
Founding Fathers vested in Congress, not the President, the power to initiate
war, except to repel an imminent attack on the United States or its citizens.
They reasoned that requiring the President to come to Congress first
would slow things down… allow for more careful decision making before sending
Americans to fight and die… and ensure broader public support.
The
Founding Fathers were, as in most things, profoundly right.
That’s why I
want to be very clear: if the President takes us to war with Iran without
Congressional approval, I will call for his impeachment.
I do not say
this lightly or to be provocative. I am dead serious. I have chaired the Senate
Judiciary Committee. I still teach constitutional law. I’ve consulted with some
of our leading constitutional scholars. The Constitution is clear. And so am I.
I’m saying this now to put the administration on notice and hopefully to
deter the President from taking unilateral action in the last year of his
administration.
If war is warranted with a nation of 70 million people,
it warrants coming to Congress and the American people first.
45. In a
speech on the Senate Floor in 1998, then Senator Joseph Biden maintained:
“...the only logical conclusion is that the framers [of the United States
Constitution] intended to grant to Congress the power to initiate all
hostilities, even limited wars.”
46. On December 20, 2007, then Senator
Barack Obama informed the Boston Globe, based upon his extensive knowledge of
the United States Constitution: "The President does not have power under the
Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that
does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the
nation."
III.
USURPATION OF THE WAR POWER OVER LIBYA
47.
President Barack Obama’s military attacks against Libya constitute acts of
war.
48. Congressman J. Randy Forbes (VA-4) had the following exchange
with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates during a March 31, 2011 House Armed
Services Committee Hearing on the legality of the present military operation in
Libya:
Congressman Forbes: Mr. Secretary, if tomorrow a foreign nation
intentionally, for whatever reason, launched a Tomahawk missile into New York
City, would that be considered an act of war against the United
States?
Secretary Gates: Probably so.
Congressman Forbes: Then I
would assume the same laws would apply if we launched a Tomahawk missile at
another nation—is that also true?
Secretary Gates: You’re getting into
constitutional law here and I am no expert on it.
Congressman Forbes: Mr.
Secretary, you’re the Secretary of Defense. You ought to be an expert on what’s
an act of war or not. If it’s an act of war to launch a Tomahawk missile on New
York City would it not also be an act of war to launch a Tomahawk missile by us
at another nation?
Secretary Gates: Presumably.
49. Since the
passage of United Nations Security Council resolution 1973 on March 19, 2011,
the United States has detonated over 200 tomahawk land attack cruise missiles
and 455 precision-guided bombs on Libyan soil.
50. Libya posed no actual
or imminent threat to the United States when President Obama unleashed Operation
Odyssey Dawn.
51. On March 27, 2011, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates
stated that Libya never posed an “actual or imminent threat to the United
States.” He further stated that Libya has never constituted a “vital interest”
to the United States.
52. United Nations Security Council resolution 1973
directs an indefinite United States military quagmire in Libya, authorizing “all
necessary measures” to protect Libyan civilians, which clearly contemplates
removal by force of the murderous regime of Col. Muammar Qadhafi.
53. In
a Letter From the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and
the President Pro Tempore of the Senate sent March 21, 2011, President Barack
Obama informed Members of Congress that “U.S. forces have targeted the Qadhafi
regime's air defense systems, command and control structures, and other
capabilities of Qadhafi's armed forces used to attack civilians and civilian
populated areas. We will seek a rapid, but responsible, transition of operations
to coalition, regional, or international organizations that are postured to
continue activities as may be necessary to realize the objectives of U.N.
Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973.”
54. In his March 21, 2011
letter, President Barack Obama further informed Members of Congress that he
opted to take unilateral military action “…in support of international efforts
to protect civilians and prevent a humanitarian disaster.”
55. President
Barack Obama has usurped congressional authority to decide on war or peace with
Libya, and has declared he will persist in additional usurpations of the
congressional power to commence war whenever he decrees it would advance his
idea of the national interest. On March 28, 2011, he declared to Congress and
the American people: “I have made it clear that I will never hesitate to use our
military swiftly, decisively, and unilaterally when necessary to defend our
people, our homeland, our allies, and our core interests” (emphasis
added).
56. President Obama’s humanitarian justification for war in Libya
establishes a threshold that would justify his initiation of warfare in scores
of nations around the globe, including Iran, North Korea, Syria, Sudan, Myanmar,
China, Belarus, Zimbabwe, Cuba, and Russia.
57. In Olmstead v. United
States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928), Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote on behalf of a
majority of the United States Supreme Court:
Experience should teach us
to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are
beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their
liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious
encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
58.
President Barack Obama has signed an order, euphemistically named a
“Presidential Finding,” authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel
forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, further entangling the
United States in the Libyan conflict, despite earlier promises of restraint.
Truth is invariably the first casualty of war.
59. In response to
questions by Members of Congress during a classified briefing on March 30, 2011,
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton indicated that the President needs no
Congressional authorization for his attack on the Libyan nation, and will ignore
any Congressional attempt by resolution or otherwise to constrain or halt United
States participation in the Libyan war.
60. On March 30, 2011, by
persistent silence or otherwise, Secretary Clinton rebuffed congressional
inquiries into President Obama’s view of the constitutionality of the War Powers
Resolution of 1973. She failed to cite a single judicial decision in support of
President Obama’s recent actions, relying instead on the undisclosed legal
opinions of White House attorneys.
61. President Barack Obama, in
flagrant violation of his constitutional oath to execute his office as President
of the United States and preserve and protect the United States Constitution,
has usurped the exclusive authority of Congress to authorize the initiation of
war, in that on March 19, 2011 President Obama initiated an offensive military
attack against the Republic of Libya without congressional authorization. In so
doing, President Obama has arrested the rule of law, and saluted a vandalizing
of the Constitution that will occasion ruination of the Republic, the crippling
of individual liberty, and a Leviathan government unless the President is
impeached by the House of Representatives and removed from office by the
Senate.
In all of this, President Barack Obama has acted in a manner
contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government,
to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest
injury of the people of the United States.
Posted by Ben Smith 05:15
PM
Hornbeck-v-Salazar-Intervener-.pdf
Arguments
in one of the lawsuits challenging Barack Obama’s eligibility to be President of
the United States has finally worked its way through the California court system
and will be heard by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on May 2.
Ordinary Americans could be forgiven for believing that the
Democrat political effete elite and the main stream media (MSM) have been
working in parallel to dismantle the 
Politics has recently replaced the Constitution as the basis for the rule of law in the United States. It is a recipe for chaos, if permitted to continue.
Yawn.
Anderson 
Arizona Senate passes Obama birther bill after boost from Donald Trump
http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2011/04/13/arizona-senate-passes-obama-birther.html
Arizona Eligibility Bill Passes State Senate, Moves Back to House
http://www.therightsideoflife.com/2011/04/13/arizona-eligibility-bill-passes-state-senate-moves-back-to-house