John Nichols: House Republicans Shred Constitution With Backdoor Proposal of Permanent War

[marmar]

from The Nation:




House Republicans Shred Constitution With Backdoor Proposal of Permanent War

John Nichols
May 11, 2011


House Republicans like to talk -- and talk, and talk -- about their regard for the founders and the Constitution.

House Speaker John Boehner, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, R-Tea Party, and their circle even attempted -- in unsettlingly bumbling manner -- to read the document into the Congressional Record at the opening of the current Congress.

Now, however, with a backdoor plan to commit the United States to a course of permanent warmaking, they are affronting the most basic premises of a Constitution that requires congressional declarations of all wars and direct and engaged oversight of military missions.

The House Republican leadership, working in conjunction with House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, R-California, has included in the 2012 defense authorization bill language (borrowed from the sweeping Detainee Security Act) that would effectively declare a state of permanent war against unnamed and ill-defined foreign forces "associated" with the Taliban and al Qaeda. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blog/160594/house-republicans-shred-constitution-backdoor-proposal-permanent-war

[Drale]

1. Didn't Bush already do that with his "war on terror"?

[pacalo]

2. Bush/Cheney & their war investors lobbying for this?

[Leopolds Ghost]

3. Clarity on what this means exactly, please?