It's not really that insane. Don't overreact to Trump stuff - it leads you to make bad decisions and assumptions.

This archaic and formal "I do declare war upon theee" is not flexible enough for the modern world and so we have found, perhaps an unhappy middle ground where the President can indeed take military action, for a limited period of time (60 days) without congressional authorization. The President is the civilian commander of the military and regardless of whether it is a Democrat or Republican we, like in other cases, give the President the discretion to make these choices. You may not like their exercise of power, but it is legal, Constitutional, and intentional and even if it is Donald Trump (much to my displeasure) we as a society trust him and his office to use this power responsibly and for the good of the American people. Even in the case of Iran and Venezuela, frankly, I think he has used power responsibly (if less effective than it should be) and for the good of the American people. We can't have a nuclear Iran in the Middle East, nor can we or should we accept thugs like Maduro running a country into the ground and causing mass migration to the US and causing problems here and breaking our laws.

There are folks in the cabinet that can take action, or resign, &c., but as the Executive the president selects his cabinet and they serve at his pleasure, once they are confirmed by the Senate. This is true for all presidents and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.

I think sometimes we forget, these are just people. We give them broad authority and they get to, by virtue of being elected, exercise that power as they see fit though ideally if or when a law is broken we deal with it through the judicial system.

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stasomatic 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What's the recourse when they fall into a natural senile abyss like with the previous POTUS? Wait and see? I naively lived under an assumption there was a system of checks and balances that's not a coup d'état.

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ericmay 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's just up to those that we elected to make a decision or enact legislation. If they decide tat the president isn't senile enough, then that's just what they get to decide. Sometimes I think folks are expecting there to be an ever increasing system of accountability or authority to appeal to, but no it's just those people and they get to decide. If you don't like their decision, outside of the ballot box or whatever other means you have available to protest their decision, then you just have to live with what they say or decide. They are the authority. They decide to invoke the 25th Amendment or not. Not you.

	▲	stasomatic 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'll bite. What's in it for them ("They are the authority")? Weathering the weather until the next election? I'm prone to assuming that people higher on the totem pole are smarter, more experienced, more nuanced, better educated, that's on me.

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JumpCrisscross 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> What's the recourse when they fall into a natural senile abyss like with the previous POTUS?

Congress should tighten up the War Powers Act, including but not limited to making the Secretary of Defense personally liable for breaches. (We do this with CFOs under Sarbanes-Oxley.)

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bdangubic 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

previous POTUS? you meant current, right?

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collingreen 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If the constitution needs amending, amend it.

Just "doing war" and calling it something else because you find the "right" way inconvenient or impractical is ridiculous, immoral, and illegal.

If the government acts on behalf of and derives its authority from the will of the people then do it according to our shared governance. If not then the people claiming autocracy or oligarchy or techno-feudalism has supplanted our democracy are probably on to something.

Tl;dr - no shit following the law is less convenient than just doing whatever you want

	▲	ericmay 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> If the constitution needs amending, amend it. Is there something about the War Powers Act that's unconstitutional? If so, what specifically? I'm struggling here to understand what is being alleged to be unconstitutional. Separately, I actually think Congress has been dysfunctional and has been outsourcing its power to the Executive and Judicial branches, but these claims about constitutional breaches seem to be, at best, wrong.