AP reports that incoming House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) “will arrange to have the U.S. Constitution read on the floor Thursday.”

BRUCE FEIN
Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General and General Counsel to the Federal Communications Commission under President Reagan and is author of the new book “American Empire: Before the Fall.” He recently wrote a piece titled “Ten Congressional Commandments,” which states: “The Constitution exclusively empowers Congress to authorize the initiation of war under Article I, Section 8. The Founding Fathers constitutionally precluded the president from deciding on war or peace because of the executive branch’s incentive to exaggerate danger. War crowns the president with fame, secrecy, spending, and arbitrary powers over the citizenry. …

“Under the Constitution, only Congress may authorize the president to place U.S. citizens on assassination lists for alleged complicity with foreign terrorist organizations by obtaining a judicial warrant based on probable cause to believe the target is an imminent danger to the life or limb of an American. The Founding Fathers did not trust any single man to be judge, jury, and executioner. …

“Only Congress is empowered to define and delimit the scope of the state secrets privilege, which denies victims of constitutional wrongdoing a judicial avenue of redress.

“Under the Constitution, laws passed by Congress (whether one page or thousands of pages long) must be either approved or vetoed in their entirety by the president, a conclusion that commanded the ready consent of President George Washington. Presidential signing statements that assert the intent of the executive to disregard portions of signed laws it believes are unconstitutional are tantamount to absolute line-item vetoes declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Clinton v. New York.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167