Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Your Weekly Rush - The relevant Quote

For those of you who wondered about my earlier post, here is the quotation from Rush Limbaughs Website.
RUSH: But prior to that, there was the initial resolution shortly after 9/11 -- and I wrote a bunch of op-eds about this, and I was summarizing one of them here in this bite, again from August 29th of 2002.

RUSH ARCHIVE: I think it's amazing that the president got this from Congress, but I know why. It happened in the heat of the moment three days after September 11th when everybody wants to show unity and resolve and all that. But here: Let me just read the relevant section here from the op-ed itself. "Clearly Congress has an important role. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution states that Congress has power to declare war," and on September 14th, 2001, Congress passed a joint resolution which states in part that, quote: "The president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines, planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11th, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States." Now, what is that if it's not a declaration of war? And let me read to you the part of this that really is the final nail in the coffin. "The president," singular, commander-in-chief, one person, "is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11th, 2001 or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States." [Italics added] There's nothing -- I mean, look, I know it offends some of you to point out, but it's true. There's nothing in here that says the president has to prove it to anybody.

RUSH: Now, the question is, is that a declaration of war? It was. If you go to the Constitution, you will read and read and read and read, and you will find nothing about the language of such a declaration.
Some phrases jump out at me. The last sentence of the middle section, for example. The President doesn't have to prove it to anybody; he can just do whatever he wants. Kind of nice for President Bush; but I suppose Rush will be fine with a Democratic President having the same kind of power.

Or will he??

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