Why The Warring About War: What The Moron Media Don’t Explain

Constitution, Just War, libertarianism, War

This past Friday, CNN was festooned with the usual bobbing heads kibitzing about whether or not the administration had committed the country to war or not. The quarreling parties did not explain to the viewers whose brains they addle daily, why this distinction mattered. I doubt they know. I mean, if the president indeed possesses all the powers CNN journos often claim for him—why must their Almighty Mulatto bother to seek consent for his actions? Republicans are pretty much on board when it comes to executive overreach, although they’d prefer their guy to be doing the overreaching.

Here is a typical exchange, times 10 a day:

ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Is the United States at war with ISIS. It sure sounds from the president’s speech that we are.

JOHN KERRY, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: I think that is the wrong terminology.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Make no mistake. We know we are at war with ISIL.

BURNETT: Is this war?

MCCHRYSTAL: Well, I mean, you can trip over and argue about whether it’s a war for congressional purposes. If you are on the ground and people are getting killed, to a soldier it feels like war and to the population it feels like war. So it’s a struggle.

[SNIP]

And here’s the logical extension of the “to war or not to war” debate, which the Moron Media seems incapable of deducing: It matters whether the president has committed the country to war or not, because:

1) While the power to declare war under various statutes like the War Powers Act, the Iraq Resolution, and the Use of Force Act was shifted to the Executive, to comport with a trend toward centralization of power in this branch—according to these statutes, the War Powers Act, in particular, “he cannot lawfully pursue any military action whatsoever after 180 days.”

2) War declared by executive order may be legal, but it is still unconstitutional. It flouts the obligation to get “the consent of the governed,” to quote the Declaration of Independence.

The libertarian’s duty is to reject the law of the state when it is at odds with natural justice. The process adopted so far by the Bush and Obama executive flouts both the U.S Constitution and the natural law. But Just War principles are for another debate, another time.

As for the Constitution, over to James Madison: “‘Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things, be proper or safe judges, whether a war ought to be commenced, continued, or concluded.’ Thus it is Congress that declares a war. The U.S. government is beholden to the Constitution, which prohibits the president from declaring war.

Explains Louis Fisher, senior specialist in separation of powers at the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress: ‘Keeping the power to commit the country to war—and to all the costs of war—in separate hands from the power to wage war once declared was a bedrock principle for the framers.'”

Modern statutes like the War Powers Resolution, the Iraq Resolution, and the Use of Force Act do not displace the constitutional text and the framers’ intent. (From “UNNATURAL LAWLESSNESS”)

Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership

Constitution, GUNS, Judaism & Jews

As some readers already know, I was recruited to “Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership,” on whose blog, “Packing Heat; Shedding Light,” I blog together with other natural-rights nuts.

As is often the case with us Jews—especially a sample selected for its proclivity and affinity for uncompromising argument in favor of freedom—there’s much intrigue.

Check it out. Do use the Comments Section liberally.

Merciful Judge Masipa

Justice, Law, South-Africa

On Fox News, Megyn Kelly was screeching that Oscar Pistorius got away with murder. Kelly’s reasoning was of a piece with neoconservative chauvinism: Judge Thokozile Masipa, the presiding justice in the Pistorius case, did not render the verdict an American judge would have handed down, hence to Kelly, the verdict had to be wrong.

I can’t say the decision Judge Masipa read out was an elegant decision. It is, nevertheless, a merciful one:

Pistorius was found guilty, Friday, of culpable homicide, the South African term for unintentionally, but unlawfully, killing a person. It’s akin to negligent killing.
A day before the verdict, Judge Thokozile Masipa cleared him of murder in the killing of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.
His sentencing starts on October 13, the judge said after granting him bail.
There is no minimum sentence for culpable homicide in South African law, so it will be up to the judge to decide. … … But in grabbing his gun and heading toward the supposed threat, Pistorius “acted too hastily and used excessive force,” Masipa ruled Thursday.
“His conduct was negligent” and not what a reasonable man would do in the circumstances — not even a disabled one, she said.
Defense arguments that his upbringing “in a crime-riddled environment and in a home where the mother was paranoid and always carried a firearm” might explain his conduct that night, but “it does not excuse the conduct,” Masipa said.(CNN)

I believe Oscar Pistorius is stupid, irresponsible; an example of a bad gun-owner. But I do not believe he purposefully “murdered Reeva Steenkamp after a domestic row,” as the state endeavored to show, but, it would appear, failed to show.

“Into the Cannibal’s Pot” is dedicated to—and I quote—“my African sisters, Nomasomi Khala and Annie Dlahmini, whose lives touched mine.” In her deliberative, wise manner, Justice Mazipa reminded me of those two ladies whom I miss dearly. She seemed impervious to the racial, liberal rubbish that swirled around the case.

Questions about the Masipa verdict are raised in “Pistorius judgment: Was there no intention to kill someone behind the toilet door?”

Leave ISIS To The Homies

Barack Obama, Bush, Foreign Policy, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Israel, Middle East

“Leave ISIS To The Homies” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

… Despotism and populism finally coalesced. Driven by polls and craving plaudits from the pundits, the president cobbled together a strategy. Within hours, love was in the air again. Members of a lovelorn liberal media scurried about like teens on prom night. It had been a long time since they felt the same rush about Obama. In his televised address to the nation, the president committed to increasing the ongoing airstrikes in Iraq; said he would take the fight to ISIL in Syria, too. The hormonal monitors at CNN spiked with each paternal promise of protection. “If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven,” roared Big Daddy. …

… Easily the most ludicrous aspect of Dr. Feelgood’s “plan” is the promise of “military assistance to the Syrian opposition”: “I again call on Congress, again, to give us additional authorities and resources to train and equip these fighters.”

There is no telling the good Syrian opposition from the bad. If anything, there is a “growing preponderance of radical Islamists in the Syrian rebel force fighting Assad’s army,” seconds the outstanding intelligence provider DEBKAfile. Currently fighting ISIS is Bashar Hafez al-Assad, Syria’s embattled leader, whom Hussein, McCain and Clinton wanted to unseat.

The unseating of yet another extremely effective law-and-order leader, Saddam Hussein, is what unleashed ISIS. Despite what Delphic Oracle Dana Perino says in praise of her “prescient” boss’s “strategizing”; Bush 43 owns ISIS. Fidelity to historical fact demands that Bush get Brownie points for turning Iraq from a rogue state to a failed state, where mad dogs thrive. …

Read the complete column. “Leave ISIS To The Homies” is now on WND.