‘Nothing More Impeachable' Than War Without Authorization, Says Constitutional Scholar

Earlier this week, Boehner gave obama a strict deadline of tomorrow to get the consent of congress for the action in Libya. Today a bipartisan group including Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul and Walter Jones filed a lawsuit against the obama administration over operations in Libya.

Every Constitutional scholar says obama is violating the Constitution by seeking the approval of congress.

Basing his actions on a u.n or nato mandate also violates our soveriegnty. Since when does our Country take orders from either of those antiquated organizations? I guess since obama was elected. We are not Europe. Our Country decides when and where we go to war, not nato and damn sure not the u.n.

Since obama blatantly disregards the Constitution at every opportunity, congress should take THIS opportunity to begin the impeachment process. Maybe even legal action. Anything they could do to keep him from further shredding the will of our Founding Fathers...

By Terence P. Jeffrey - CNSNews

Louis Fisher, a scholar in residence at the Constitution Project who served for 40 years as a constitutional law expert at the Library of Congress, says Americans and members of Congress should understand that President Barack Obama committed a “very grave offense” against the Constitution in taking military action in Libya without congressional authorization. 

“I am not going to recommend that the House Judiciary Committee hold impeachment hearings, but I would like members of Congress and the public to say that nothing would be more impeachable than a President who takes the country to war without coming to Congress, who does it unilaterally,” Fisher told CNSNews.com’s Online With Terry Jeffrey.

“So, I would like people to be educated, including members of Congress, to be educated that that is a very grave offense,” said Fisher.

On March 19, President Barack Obama ordered the U.S. military to take actions against the Libyan regime of Muammar Gadhafi.

The day before that, Obama had given a speech stating that a resolution passed by the U.N. Security Council on the previous day that authorized the use of military force in Libya would justify U.S. action there.

“Yesterday, in response to a call for action by the Libyan people and the Arab League, the U.N. Security Council passed a strong resolution that demands an end to the violence against citizens,” said Obama. “It authorizes the use of force with an explicit commitment to pursue all necessary measures to stop the killing, to include the enforcement of a no-fly zone over Libya.”

In his March 19 speech informing the American people that he had ordered military action in Libya that was already taking place as he spoke, Obama said he was taking the action to defend the “writ of the international community.”

“So we must be clear: Actions have consequences, and the writ of the international community must be enforced,” said Obama. “That is the cause of this coalition.”

Fisher, whose book Presidential War Power is a definitive scholarly account of the drafting of the constitutional war power and its historical interpretation and implementation, scoffs at Obama’s argument that the United Nations, which the U.S. joined through a treaty ratified by the Senate, can usurp the war power the Constitution gives to both houses of Congress.

“He said I have authorization from the Security Council. It is not authorization under U.S. constitutional law,” said Fisher.

“First of all, I would like to make it clear that in the U.N. Charter, you cannot have the president and the Senate through the treaty process--the UN Charter or NATO--you cannot have those two actors take the power of Congress and the House of Representatives and give it to either the Security Council or to NATO countries,” said Fisher.

“And I think even people who read presidential power broadly know that that is not possible,” he said.

Read the rest at the link above...

U.N. Agreement Should Have All Gun Owners Up In Arms

It's one thing when you get lame emails talking about this stuff, it's another when Forbes is on it. This is getting all too serious very fast. If hillary clinton is able to get this past congress we are screwed. We will no longer be the United States of America. We will be just another in a random bunch of nations. If we quietly give up our Constitutional Rights we open ourselves up to rule by the u.n.

We are a sovereign Nation. We hold allegiance to no foreign nation or body. Passing this will violate all that our Nation has stood for for the last 235 years.

How would you like to have u.n. police thugs cruising the streets of your city? Enforcing international gun control laws? Seizing your firearms? No? You better get on the horn with your congress critters. I'll be on the phone and email and facebook and twitter and even snailmail with mine...

By Larry Bell - Forbes

It may not come as surprising news to many of you that the United Nations doesn’t approve of our Second Amendment. Not one bit. And they very much hope to do something about it with help from some powerful American friends. Under the guise of a proposed global “Small Arms Treaty” premised to fight “terrorism”, “insurgency” and “international crime syndicates” you can be quite certain that an even more insidious threat is being targeted – our Constitutional right for law-abiding citizens to own and bear arms.

What, exactly, does the intended agreement entail?

While the terms have yet to be made public, if passed by the U.N. and ratified by our Senate, it will almost certainly force the U.S. to:

1.Enact tougher licensing requirements, creating additional bureaucratic red tape for legal firearms ownership.

2.Confiscate and destroy all “unauthorized” civilian firearms (exempting those owned by our government of course).

3.Ban the trade, sale and private ownership of all semi-automatic weapons (any that have magazines even though they still operate in the same one trigger pull – one single “bang” manner as revolvers, a simple fact the ant-gun media never seem to grasp).

4.Create an international gun registry, clearly setting the stage for full-scale gun confiscation.

5.In short, overriding our national sovereignty, and in the process, providing license for the federal government to assert preemptive powers over state regulatory powers guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment in addition to our Second Amendment rights.

 

Have no doubt that this plan is very real, with strong Obama administration support. In January 2010 the U.S. joined 152 other countries in endorsing a U.N. Arms Treaty Resolution that will establish a 2012 conference to draft a blueprint for enactment. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pledged to push for Senate ratification.

Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton has cautioned gun owners to take this initiative seriously, stating that the U.N. “is trying to act as though this is really just a treaty about international arms trade between nation states, but there is no doubt that the real agenda here is domestic firearms control.”

Read the rest at the link above...

Michigan: Police Search Cell Phones During Traffic Stops

I have to tell you, I would be going to jail. There is no way in HELL that anything on my phone that is the business of a traffic cop. My phone calls or photos have nothing at all to do with anything that could get me stopped.

The may be the first time ever, that I will say I agree with the aclu 100%...

The Newspaper

ACLU seeks information on Michigan program that allows cops to download information from smart phones belonging to stopped motorists.

The Michigan State Police have a high-tech mobile forensics device that can be used to extract information from cell phones belonging to motorists stopped for minor traffic violations. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan last Wednesday demanded that state officials stop stonewalling freedom of information requests for information on the program.

ACLU learned that the police had acquired the cell phone scanning devices and in August 2008 filed an official request for records on the program, including logs of how the devices were used. The state police responded by saying they would provide the information only in return for a payment of $544,680. The ACLU found the charge outrageous.

"Law enforcement officers are known, on occasion, to encourage citizens to cooperate if they have nothing to hide," ACLU staff attorney Mark P. Fancher wrote. "No less should be expected of law enforcement, and the Michigan State Police should be willing to assuage concerns that these powerful extraction devices are being used illegally by honoring our requests for cooperation and disclosure."

A US Department of Justice test of the CelleBrite UFED used by Michigan police found the device could grab all of the photos and video off of an iPhone within one-and-a-half minutes. The device works with 3000 different phone models and can even defeat password protections.

"Complete extraction of existing, hidden, and deleted phone data, including call history, text messages, contacts, images, and geotags," a CelleBrite brochure explains regarding the device's capabilities. "The Physical Analyzer allows visualization of both existing and deleted locations on Google Earth. In addition, location information from GPS devices and image geotags can be mapped on Google Maps."

The ACLU is concerned that these powerful capabilities are being quietly used to bypass Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.

"With certain exceptions that do not apply here, a search cannot occur without a warrant in which a judicial officer determines that there is probable cause to believe that the search will yield evidence of criminal activity," Fancher wrote. "A device that allows immediate, surreptitious intrusion into private data creates enormous risks that troopers will ignore these requirements to the detriment of the constitutional rights of persons whose cell phones are searched."

The national ACLU is currently suing the Department of Homeland Security for its policy of warrantless electronic searches of laptops and cell phones belonging to people entering the country who are not suspected of committing any crime