"The Congress shall have Power. . .To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water. . ."
--United States Constitution, Article I, Section 8
Seems simple enough to me. But then, I'm just an idiot behind a keyboard. Thank God there are smart guys like Eric Cantor (R-Delusional) to set me straight with his stunning legal and constitutional analysis.
You see, just now on Hardball, Cantor, after recovering from the awkwardness of his initial assertion that soldiers in the field could determine whether or not the U.S. Army could invade Iran (presumably from their present positions in Iraq), declared that the President, in his position of Commander-in-Chief, had the sole authority to decide whether or not our forces can attack Iran.
Wrap your mind around that. The C-in-C has the sole authority to "decide" whether we go to war with a sovreign country. As if all of Article I of the Constitution were a "serving suggestion" like the appetizing pictures on the front of a TV dinner package.
When an incredulous Chris Matthews asked Cantor why then the president went to Congress to get authorization before going into Iraq, Cantor said that Junior only did it on the advice of counsel, implying that it would have been perfectly alright had we committed troops, tanks, planes, ships and all those KBR laundry trucks on Junior's say-so alone.
I grew a pretty significant part of my up in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and I have distinct memories of civics classes, where we were taught the concepts of constitutional seperation of powers. One of the first understandings I retained about our government was the sentence, "Congress shall have the power to declare war."
My question to Rep. Cantor: did you go to school in Virginia or did you just move there to run for Congress?