[Updated question- Does this mean 2007 Biden would lead the charge to impeach the 2011 if Biden wasn't 2011 Obama's VP?]
Obama has expressed his desire to have politics be less partisan, even as he proved himself to be one of the most partisan of players, but he finally united Republicans and Democrats as both sides denounce him after the latest news showing Obama ignored and rejected the legal guidance of Pentagon and the Justice Department lawyers when they informed him he did not have legal authority to continue military action in Libya without Congressional authorization as per the War Powers Resolution of 1973.
Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to “hostilities.” Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20.
Instead of listening to the legal advice provided and which is meant to guide a president as to not violate the laws even he must follow, Obama simply ignored those very people and shopped around a bit to find someone who would tell him what he wanted to hear.
Far left liberal progressives, such as Glenn Greenwald at Salon and David Dayen at FireDogLake seem a tad (yes, understatement) incensed over Obama's outright "power grab" and complete disregard for the law and his own violation of said law.
A bipartisan group of House members have already filed a lawsuit against Obama over his Libya decisions, Congress is about to begin a full investigation, the Speaker of the House John Boehner has picked up the gauntlet Obama threw down and now, with this latest bombshell, the whole shebang is about to blow.
I seriously doubt that this is an issue Obama truly wants to use as a distraction from unemployment, gas prices, inflation, housing, foreclosures and the economy, yet here it is.
ALLAHPUNDIT at Hot Air gets the quote of the day:
".....This doofus almost certainly could have gotten congressional authorization shortly after the mission began if he’d asked for it, but for reasons I still don’t understand, he refused. I guess he wants to maximize his presidential prerogative to use drones anywhere he likes, notwithstanding Johnson’s assessment that that’s enough to constitute “hostilities” under the WPA, in order to give himself a free hand in Yemen and beyond. Good work, champ — you’ve now forced a high stakes, politically risky separation-of-powers confrontation with Congress over a conflict to which virtually no one has paid attention for weeks."
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