Why African Americans Should be Skeptical of Rand Paul’s New and Improved Republican Party

K
entucky Senator and rising star in the GOP, Rand Paul recently spoke at Howard University, a mostly black campus in Washington DC. He came to the campus to ask black Americans to give conservatism a second look. He appears to be banking on African Americans ignoring decades of controversial stands on racial issues. 

Now that it is clear that the Republican party can no longer win elections by appealing to white prejudices, Paul is trying to re-write history, his own, his father’s and the the Republican conservative movement. African American voters have every reason to be skeptical of Paul’s hollow overture.

Obama’s Impeachment: Mr. Jones and the War Powers Act 2/2

by Nomad

In the previous post in this series, we examined in detail the resolution put forward by Republican Congressman Walter B. Jones of North Carolina charging President Obama with impeachable acts for his handling of the incidents in Libya last year. For the most part, we have seen them to be specious and without any real foundation. As I mention at the close of that post, there still seemed to be something I was overlooking. We'll begin with a closer look at the law.

The War Powers Act as Written

source:

To understand more about the War Powers Act, we need to take a small step back in time. 

In an attempt to put in practice the lessons learned from the Vietnam War, in 1973 Congress established the War Powers Resolution (later called the War Powers Act) which attempted to limit the president’s ability to wage undeclared wars; more precisely to limit the president’s ability to conduct a protracted military engagement without the authorization of Congress.

The act also attempted to clarify the ambiguity on the Constitution which considers the president the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces while at the same time, gives Congress the power to declare war and to provide the funding.