Obama to Congress: Please Authorize What I'm Already Doing
...but if you don't authorize it, he'll keep doing it anyway.
If there was a single moment in the State of the Union that summed up the state of executive power in the United States today, it was when Barack Obama said this…
For more than a year, America has led a coalition of more than 60 countries to cut off ISIL's financing, disrupt their plots, stop the flow of terrorist fighters, and stamp out their vicious ideology. With nearly 10,000 air strikes, we're taking out their leadership, their oil, their training camps, their weapons. We're training, arming, and supporting forces who are steadily reclaiming territory in Iraq and Syria.
…and then, immediately afterward, said this:
If this Congress is serious about winning this war, and wants to send a message to our troops and the world, you should finally authorize the use of military force against ISIL. Take a vote.
We live in an age when a president can describe the military force he is using against the Islamic State, then blithely suggest that Congress could help by authorizing it. All without a trace of either shame or irony on his face.
