Obama only pres not to comply with war powers act

[GISG]

(CNSNews.com) - 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....

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.

“You cannot use a treaty to amend the Constitution,” he explained.

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