Saturday AM ~ TheFrontPageCover

TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
War and the Separation of Powers 
by Judge Andrew Napolitano  
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Grassley Protects Rogue Mueller Coup -
 Gets Graham/Fein-stein Belly Rub
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{ rickwells.us } ~ Senator Chuck Grassley, the bumbling, illiterate fool who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee... has made his bed. He and his girly-boy partner in sedition, Lindsey Graham, Thom Tillis and rino-Jeff Flake have chosen to lay down in the swamp with the Democrat snakes rather than to stand up for our President. They have joined in the COUP in an effort to insulate the grand inquisitor, to make him an invincible, untouchable force for evil. The swamp RINOs have chosen to be a party to an unjust and unwarranted witch hunt rather than acknowledge a rogue investigation that is politically motivated and focused solely on removing President Trump by any means possible has gone completely out of control.  Graham and Tillis are up for reelection in 2020 and Grassley in 2022. rino-Flake is being dumped like the trash he is at the curb this year and will not seek reelection in the face of enormous voter rejection and unpopularity. Maybe the others think Americans will forget their treachery and escape a similar fate – they’re wrong. The nauseating betrayals have to stop...
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Bret Baier Interviews James Comey
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by sundance
{ theconservativetreehouse.com } ~ Former FBI Director James Comey strategically, and intentionally, showed up 20 minutes late... for a scheduled live interview with Fox News Bret Baier thereby limiting the amount of time available for questions. There are two segments to the interview. The first segment is 20 minutes long. In the first segment James Comey showcases his forward-moving legal defense strategy. Comey outlines that he was kept in the dark, and did not know, about almost all of the central elements within the actions taken by those under his leadership.
‘These are the Emails liar-Hillary Doesn't Want you to See'
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{ judicialwatch.org } ~ On April 25, 2018, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton appeared on “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel... to discuss Judicial Watch’s release of 281 pages of liar-Clinton emails containing classified information and discussions connected to the liar-Clinton Foundation.  https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/in-the-news/tom-fitton-emails-hillary-didnt-want-see/?utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=on+the+air&utm_term=members&utm_content=20180427005648.
Trump considering former House 
Veterans Affairs' chair Jeff Miller for VA secretary
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by Gabby Morrongiello
{ washingtonexaminer.com } ~ President Trump is looking seriously at former House Veterans' Affairs Committee Chair Jeff Miller to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs... a senior White House official told the Washington Examiner. The retired Florida congressman left the House in 2016 after serving eight terms on Capitol Hill, during which he became a major advocate for the nation's veterans. Miller, a conservative Republican, helped usher a $16 million bipartisan VA reform plan through Congress in 2014 when the second-largest federal agency was beset by scandals. The bill was signed into law three years after he was named chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee. Miller emerged as a leading candidate for VA secretary after White House physician Ronny Jackson withdrew his nomination early Thursday. The Navy doctor faced an uphill confirmation battle in the Senate after allegations of excessive drinking and improper drug distribution emerged. Jackson denied all of the claims made against him...  https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/trump-considering-former-house-veterans-affairs-chair-jeff-miller-for-va-secretary 
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Diamond and Silk Go Off On Rep Sheila Jackson Lee: Don’t Try To Mix My Words 
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“That’s Not What Trump Said” Sarah Sanders Goes Off On Jim Acosta For Lying
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Gen. Mattis on Russian Mercenaries in Syria: I Ordered Their Annihilation
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Israel’s UN Ambassador Exposes Iran’s Central Induction And Recruitment Center In Syria”
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President Trump Pledges His Support To America’s Wounded Warriors
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Michael Goodwin: James Comey Is A Scam And Fraud 
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War and the Separation of Powers 
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by Judge Andrew Napolitano 
{ townhall.com } ~ A popular way to begin the first day of class in constitutional law in many American law schools is to ask the students what sets the U.S. Constitution apart from all others. Usually, they answer that it's the clauses that guarantee the freedom of speech, privacy and due process.

Yes, each of those guarantees -- if upheld -- is vital to restraining government, but the overarching and most important unique aspect of the Constitution is the separation of powers. The constitutions of many totalitarian countries pay lip service to free speech, privacy and due process, but none has the strict separation of powers that the U.S. does.

Under our Constitution, the Congress writes the laws, the president enforces them and the courts interpret them; and those powers and functions may not constitutionally be mixed or exchanged. The Congress also declares war. The president also wages war. The courts also invalidate the acts of the other two branches when they exceed their constitutional powers.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the separation of powers is integral to the Constitution not to preserve the prerogatives of each branch of government but to divide governmental powers among the branches so as to keep power diffused -- and thereby limited and protective of personal freedom.

James Madison, who wrote the Constitution, wanted not only this diffusion by separation but also tension -- even jealousy -- among the branches so as to keep each in check.

Thus, even if one branch of government consented to ceding an essential power to another branch, such a giveaway would be unconstitutional, the Supreme Court has ruled, because the core functions of each branch of the federal government may not be delegated away to either of the other two without violating the separation of powers.

I am writing about this not as a history or constitutional law mini-lesson but rather because it's necessary background information to address a real and contemporary problem. Two weeks ago, on the basis of evidence so flimsy that his own secretary of defense rejected it -- and without any legal or constitutional authority -- President Donald Trump dispatched 110 missiles to bomb certain military and civilian targets in Syria, where the president argued the Syrian government manufactured, stored or used chemical weapons.

Trump did not seek a congressional declaration of war, nor did he comply with the U.N. Charter, a treaty to which both the U.S. and Syria are signatories. Though Trump did not articulate any statutory basis for his use of the military, his predecessors often cited as legal support for their unconstitutional uses of military force two statutes -- one enacted in 2001 and the other in 2002, each known as the Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF.

The AUMFs refer to either the Taliban or al-Qaida or their affiliated forces in Afghanistan or Iraq as targets or to pursuing those who caused the attacks in America on 9/11 or those who harbor weapons of mass destruction.

Can the president legally use military force to attack a foreign land without a serious threat or legal obligation or a declaration of war from Congress? In a word: No. Here is the back story.

The Constitution is clear that only Congress can declare war and only the president can wage it. Federal law and international treaties provide that -- short of defending the country against an actual attack -- without a congressional declaration of war, the president can only constitutionally use military force to repel an enemy whose attack on America is imminent or to defend U.S. citizens and property in foreign lands from foreign attack or in aid of an ally pursuant to a treaty with that ally.

In the case of Trump's bombing Syria earlier this month, none of those conditions was met.

Prior to the strike on Syria -- but no doubt prodded by the prospect of it -- a bipartisan group of senators offered legislation supported by the president that would rescind both AUMFs, which are now seriously outdated and of no useful moral or legal authority, in favor of an unconstitutional mishmash that would permit a president to strike whomever and wherever he pleases. The president would be restrained only by a vote of Congress -- after hostilities have commenced.

Such a statute would give the president far more powers than he has now, would directly violate Congress' war-making powers by ceding them away to the president, would defy the Supreme Court on the unconstitutionality of giving away core governmental functions, would commit the U.S. to foreign wars without congressional and thus popular support, and would invite dangerous mischief by any president wanting to attack any enemy -- real or imagined, old or new -- for foreign or domestic political purposes, whether American interests are at stake or not.

The proponents of this legislation will argue that Congress would retain its war-making powers by its ability to restrain the president. That is a naive contention because congressional restraint, which can come only in the form of prohibitory legislation or withdrawal of funds, would certainly be met by a presidential veto -- and a veto can be overridden only by a two-thirds vote of both the House and the Senate.

What's going on here? It is little more than the lust of the military-industrial complex and its allies in both major political parties in Congress for war. War unifies disparate politics, arouses deep patriotic instincts, enhances the government's success in obtaining the people's sacrifices, enriches arms-makers and kills innocents. War is the health of the state.

The Constitution, written in war's aftermath, strictly limits its offensive use only to when the people's representatives in Congress have recognized a broad national consensus behind it.

When Donald Trump ran for president, he condemned foreign wars that have served no real American purpose and he condemned presidential war-making; and he promised to end both. Where is that Donald Trump today?

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