Crosscheck wrote:
Mr. Natural wrote:
Just as the Constitution is very clear that only Congress has the right to declare war, yet the last time they exercised that right and obligation was in 1941. Since then 100,000 Americans have died in wars that were not Constitutionally legal.
Some of the very same politicians who argue that the federal government has usurped authority from the states have been more than willing to allow the executive branch to usurp authority from the legislative branch, which would have horrified James Madison and the other framers of the Constitution.
Right, that's completely unrelated, but I agree with you and so does Ron Paul.
Except, the war powers clause of the Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 11) is unambiguous in its meaning and in the intent of the framers. Only one member of the Constitutional Convention even suggested that the president be given power to wage war and that idea was roundly derided as inconsistent with ideals of republican government by the rest of the Convention.
However, the 10th Amendment was originally viewed as not even being needed by the author of the Constitution (Madison said it was "superfluous" and "unnecessary") and has been found by the Supreme Court as adding "nothing to the [Constitution] as originally ratified." The Supreme Court, in its history, almost never declares laws unconstitutional for violating the 10th Amendment (I don't think it has done so more than three or four times in the last 70 years).
My point is, the very same Constitutional strict constructionists who rail about the power of the federal government, have no problem creating an imperial presidency which the original framers saw as the greater danger to liberty.
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