Making Tyranny ‘Legal’- ▻http://original.antiwar.com/peter-casey/2013/07/10/some-problems-here
Some recent secret legal opinions have been gems. When Dick Cheney needed a legal opinion that the President could wage war anywhere at any time, he turned to John Yoo, a lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Yoo set out to oblige, but ran into a problem. He discovered that the Constitution grants “power to declare war” to Congress. Because saying no to Cheney was not an option, Yoo came up with a simple solution: the Constitutional Convention didn’t really mean it! “[T]he Framing generation,” Yoo wrote in his secret memo, “well understood that declarations of war were obsolete.” According to Yoo, the “Framing generation” granted Congress a ceremonial sop to quiet those at the Convention whining about checks and balances. Although it says no such thing, the Constitution empowers the President to “make” any war he pleases, Yoo reasoned. Problem solved.