The wisdom of James Madison.

[MRM]

Hey, even a blind squirel finds a nut sometimes.

To understand the resoultion you need to know a little bit about legislative drafting. The "Whereas" part of a bill are the justification for the billl. It does not have any legal effect.

The idea is to give some insight into the legislative intent, or at least a historical records of what the legislature was thinking. Or, more commonly, it's just an advertisement for the law they want to pass. "Whereas, global warming is the hugest threat known to mankind, we hereby ban all brown cows from expelling flatus".

To understand the bill you really ignore all the whereases and look to the part that has legal effect. That is what is the law.

[WI wide body]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

As long as we are quoting politicians, here's one of my favorites:

October 10, 2002

Floor Speech of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
on S.J. Res. 45, A Resolution to Authorize the Use of
United States Armed Forces Against Iraq
As Delivered



I believe the facts that have brought us to this fateful vote are not in doubt. Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who has tortured and killed his own people, even his own family members, to maintain his iron grip on power. He used chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds and on Iranians, killing over 20 thousand people. Unfortunately, during the 1980's, while he engaged in such horrific activity, he enjoyed the support of the American government, because he had oil and was seen as a counterweight to the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran.

In 1991, Saddam Hussein invaded and occupied Kuwait, losing the support of the United States. The first President Bush assembled a global coalition, including many Arab states, and threw Saddam out after forty-three days of bombing and a hundred hours of ground operations. The U.S.-led coalition then withdrew, leaving the Kurds and the Shiites, who had risen against Saddam Hussein at our urging, to Saddam's revenge.

As a condition for ending the conflict, the United Nations imposed a number of requirements on Iraq, among them disarmament of all weapons of mass destruction, stocks used to make such weapons, and laboratories necessary to do the work. Saddam Hussein agreed, and an inspection system was set up to ensure compliance. And though he repeatedly lied, delayed, and obstructed the inspections work, the inspectors found and destroyed far more weapons of mass destruction capability than were destroyed in the Gulf War, including thousands of chemical weapons, large volumes of chemical and biological stocks, a number of missiles and warheads, a major lab equipped to produce anthrax and other bio-weapons, as well as substantial nuclear facilities.

In 1998, Saddam Hussein pressured the United Nations to lift the sanctions by threatening to stop all cooperation with the inspectors. In an attempt to resolve the situation, the UN, unwisely in my view, agreed to put limits on inspections of designated "sovereign sites" including the so-called presidential palaces, which in reality were huge compounds well suited to hold weapons labs, stocks, and records which Saddam Hussein was required by UN resolution to turn over. When Saddam blocked the inspection process, the inspectors left. As a result, President Clinton, with the British and others, ordered an intensive four-day air assault, Operation Desert Fox, on known and suspected weapons of mass destruction sites and other military targets.

In 1998, the United States also changed its underlying policy toward Iraq from containment to regime change and began to examine options to effect such a change, including support for Iraqi opposition leaders within the country and abroad.

In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001.

It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security.

Now this much is undisputed. The open questions are: what should we do about it? How, when, and with whom?

Good post. So we are agreed...Sen. Clinton made a stupid and not very well reearched or thought out vote and President Bush made an even more stupid and reckless decision to take the action to invade Iraq per that vote. Right?

[Mule]

Originally Posted by WI wide body

Mule your IQ points are showing again.

Do you think yours (is) are camouflaged?

[WI wide body]

Originally Posted by Mule

Do you think yours (is) are camouflaged?

I don't attempt to hide mine Mule. Nor do I try to expose them by typing stupid ***** about an ex-president's daughter giving a blow job. Now how about you Mule?

[Mule]

If I only had one point I'd be trying to show it off too.

[Wrecked944]

I think this is a very sane analysis. I'd also add that it is a shame that the power of congress to declare war has been bypassed in favor of "police actions" and "resolutions supporting the use of force". In addition to checking the use of force by the executive, it could also help to clarify our national intent and avoid post-invasion arguments about what the definition of "authorize" is.

Originally Posted by MRM

The problem with quoting our founding fathers, especially Madison and Jefferson, is that they wrote a lot and you can find quotes to support pretty much any position. Kind of like using verses of the Bible to support your position. Jefferson, in particular, said a lot of things about freedom of the press before he was President. After he said a lot of things about how important it was to restrain an irresponsible press. To know what they meant you really need to understand when they said it (Moses is correct to include the date, without it the quote can't stand on its own) and the context in which it was said.

I think what he is saying is that the government was set up with checks and ballances, with each branch uniquely suited to do certain things. The way the exceutive is set up - a single person with the responsibility to execute the directives of the legislature - that branch lends itself most to aggressive militarism. It's just the nature of the beast. The executive branch executes the war and is therefore the branch that most likely to want to go to war.

So instead of vesting the decision of whether to go to war with the branch of government that has the incentive to do so, the Constitution deliberately separates the incentive to do or not do something from the branch of government who has the power to make that decision.

So I don't think he was condeming the execute branch so much as pointing out a fundamental beauty of our Constitution - that the separation of powers will naturally check the impulses of the branch of government that wants to do something because it is in the nature of that branch to do it.

In a company you never put your sales people in charge of deciding what sales to make - they would sell at a loss to increase their sales numbers. You don't put the legal department in charge of decising who to sell to because they would find all sales to risky and shut down the company. So the founding fathers put Congress in charge of setting the budget and the exective in charge os spending, Congress in charge of declaring war, the President in charge of waging war, etc.

Now if we could only figure out what the original intent of the founding fathers was on all points so we could get back to it.

[Mule]

J, glad to see you came to after that

I gave you.