Farrah Bostic

It’s insane this is legal. People around Trump are profiting off war and death. I’m introducing legislation ASAP to ban this.

real significant lack of “who and/or what comes next” when it comes to the thought process behind assassinating khamenei

By the way, revoking the 2001 AUMF passed the Congress last year but wasn’t included in the defense spending bill, and hasn’t been voted on by the Senate. You want to be serious about this, Tammy, urge your colleagues to take up that vote.

Hilariously, the President can veto such a bill.

The Presidents since 9/11 have only sought Congressional authorization for the use of force twice.

Every time we bomb Houthis, or Caribbean fishing boats, or Syria, or assassinate Iran’s leaders, Congress has been merely informed because they have not revoked the AUMF.

While we sit around to find out how bad exactly it all is, a bit of cheer: the best baguette of Paris competition was won by a Sri Lankan who appears to have started as a dish washer in restaurants and eventually trained as a Boulanger.

www.paris.fr/pages/la-mei...

Senator Mullin that guy died in 1989

Every month the United States provides even more reason to boycott its products and companies — the strikes on Iran being just the latest.

In light of that, it’s a great time to ditch the products and services of US tech companies. I made a comprehensive guide to help you.

Yes, there does seem to be some corollary to the “you pretend to work and we’ll pretend to pay you” in effect here.

Come pretend we have constitutional authorities and we’ll write a blank check. Don’t make us look bad (lol).

I’m having a hard time reading this in a way other then:

“Let’s do this “the right way” - come present to us, we’ll have a vote, and give you an AUMF and we’ll see you in six months.”

Do we think Schumer would vote against this action if the regime “followed the rules”?

Because everything is terrible, i’m wondering - if they do come back to DC to vote on a war powers res, what are the odds the they vote to authorize force v to curtail or end it? I would put my money on the former rather than either of the latter.

“We rubber stamped it” seems like a bad result, too

The differences are aesthetic (more tattoos, cursing, Mar-a-Lago face, etc) and institutional (don't follow the Constitution). The one difference in the actual policy agenda is internal mass deportations. Otherwise it's basically Gingrichism.

We are At War now, according to President Bush, and I take him at his word. He also says this War might last for "a very long time." Generals and military scholars will tell you that eight or 10 years is actually not such a long time in the span of human history - which is no doubt true - but history also tells us that 10 years of martial law and a wartime economy are going to feel like a Lifetime to people who are in their twenties today. The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans who will grow up with a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed. That is extremely heavy news, and it will take a while for it to sink in. The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now. The party's over, folks.

From Hunter S. Thompson’s ESPN page 2 column one week after 9/11.

Oh how i love forgetting to check the first post for typos. I regret the error.

Nothing here is simple. The President will, per Pelosi, “own this”, but if you want an actual change to how All This works, look to Congress, and change who is in it. /end

All of this rests against a backdrop of a SCOTUS that typically adopts supine postures when the question of war powers are brought to them. They chronically defer to the President, and a low-key jealous Congress might want to avoid their tendency to assist in Congressional power erosion.

Our politics is deeply distorted by 9/11 on top of it all, which in some respects just further distorted a politics shaped by our post-war adventures in shaping the Middle East. Members of Congress are implicated in and invested in those distortions for a variety of reasons.

And so let me say something else:

Congress since the bomb power have wanted to appear to be protecting their prerogatives while never having to use them. They want to complain about presidential lawlessness but not take a vote to bring him to heel. And let’s face it, plenty of them want to do this.

And so - is this a violation of international law? Yes. Is it a violation of the Constitutional allocation of war powers? Well, only if Congress takes action to stop him. Should the AUMF be allowed to be used in this way? No, but Congress STILL HASN’T REPEALED IT and “terrorism” covers too much.

I read this as part of my polisci degree, and the updated versions in law school when I took international law and the law of war (shout out David Bowker, who rocked as an adjunct). It will never stop blowing my mind how, in trying to rein in presidential lawlessness, they mostly just formalized it.

It’s the wildest excuse for curtailment of executive power. It’s like, “don’t do this, unless you really want to, but let me know if you’re going to, or if you already have, and then we can figure it out later, k?”

And so you can see how much teeth all of this has.

The DNI must brief congressional intelligence committees about it, the majority and minority leaders, the speaker and pro tempore, and anybody else the POTUS wants to loop in. All of these briefings are, of course, classified. He should have a plan for unauthorized public disclosure.

Not to worry, he has to put this determination in writing (unless of course time is of the essence, in which case he can do it when he has time), but also try not to do it after the fact, okay? You gotta name the agencies & contractors involved now or later, and it’s gotta be Constitutional, fr!

It’s not operative here, but my fave move is the “presidential finding”. 50 USC §3093 - POTUS can only engage in covert military activity if he “determines such an action is necessary to support identifiable foreign policy objectives of the US & is important to the national security of the US”

The Congress can pass a concurrent resolution ordering the President to remove forces if there is no declaration or authorization (but again, they just show up saying they have standing authorization because Congress never repealed the 2001 AUMF).

He can tack on another 30 days “if POTUS determines and certifies to the Congress in writing that unavoidable military necessity respecting the safety of United States Armed Forces requires the continued use of such armed forces in the course of bringing about a prompt removal of such forces.”

The clock is tolling now. At 60 days, “the Pres shall terminate” his activities UNLESS Congress declares war or passes an AUMF, extends the 60 day period, or can’t meet because we’re under attack. But there is an out for the Pres to extend another 30 days.

§1544 is about how Congress is meant to respond. Once they get this report, it goes to the relevant committees. Then the Speaker/Pres pro tempore can, “if they deem it advisable” - or if 30% of their members petition for it - convene a joint session of Congress.

§1543(c) requires periodic reports about progress in these hostilities: “in no event shall he report to the Congress less often than once every six months.”

(Hey babe, you up? Bombed Iran, AUMF & Const. says I can, brb, just gonna borrow some of your stuff. Hang out this summer? Cool.)

Relying on that authority - even if that’s not what the Congress of 2001 meant - has become a standard tool of Presidents since it passed. Congress could have at any time rescinded this authority; it could have explicitly limited it. It has not.