Congress Demands Legal Justification for Trump's Syrian Missile Attack

by Nomad

Dear Mr. President

You might not have seen the joint press release from Congressman Adam Schiff and Senator Tim Kaine issued yesterday. It was in regards a letter they sent to the Trump administration concerning legal matters and the Syrian missile attack earlier this month.

An interesting letter it was, too.

Washington, DC – Yesterday, Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA), Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, and Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), a member of the Senate Armed Services and Senate Foreign Relations Committees, sent a letter to President Trump asking that he detail the legal basis for the strike against, which has yet to be provided to Congress and the American people.
Schiff and Kaine stated that a full understanding of the domestic and international legal basis for the strike is of great importance to Congress in exercising its constitutional responsibilities.

As the letter states, “By articulating a legal basis for military action, as well as laying out a strategic vision for such action, a president provides a justification for the use of the momentous power to commit American lives to a cause, but also an understanding of the limits of those powers.”
Both Schiff and Kaine believe that Bashar al-Assad must be held accountable for his atrocities and war crimes, but have argued that the missile strikes on the Syrian regime without congressional approval were unlawful.
The full text of the letter is below:

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.

Obama’s Impeachment: Mr. Jones and the War Powers Act 1/2

by Nomad

Republican  Congressman
Walter Jones of North Carolina

Republican Walter Jones of North Carolina recently sponsored a resolution (H.CON.RES.107) “expressing the sense of Congress that the use of offensive military force by a President without prior and clear authorization of an Act of Congress constitutes an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor under Article II, section 4 of the Constitution.” 

It would all too easy to write off Jones’ resolution as just another time-wasting exercise by a Congress that has already engaged in such foolishness as reciting the Constitution on the House floor. (If Vanity Fair’s calculations are accurate, that political stunt cost taxpayers a cool $1.1 million.) 

Or the embarrassing reaffirmation by Congress of the national motto “In God We trust” a resolution proposed by Rep. Randy Forbes, Republican from Virginia. (Only nine risked God’s wrath and the measure was passed 396-9, with 2 abstentions.) These are merely two examples from a list of proposals and resolutions. This kind of silliness might account for the fact that a New York Times poll in October of last year found that Congress' approval rating fell to an all-time low of 9 percent. The 112th Congress will undoubtedly go down in American political history as the most disliked.