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Posted on YouTube: June 15, 2011
By YouTube Member: MOXNEWSd0tCOM
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Posted on DU: June 16, 2011
By DU Member: democracy1st
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Reps. Dennis Kucinich and Walter Jones continued their bipartisan quest to end the U.S. military’s participation in the conflict in Libya, filing a lawsuit Tuesday in federal court against President Obama to “challenge the commitment of the United States to war in Libya absent the required constitutional legal authority.”
The lawsuit challenges what the lawmakers see as “the executive branch’s circumvention of Congress and its use of international organizations such as the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to authorize the use of military force abroad, in violation of the Constitution.”
“With regard to the war in Libya, we believe that the law was violated. We have asked the courts to move to protect the American people from the results of these illegal policies,” Kucinich said in a statement announcing the suit.
The lawsuit is signed by a bipartisan group of members of the House, including Kucinich (D-Ohio), Jones (R-North Carolina), Howard Coble (R-North Carolina), John Duncan (R-Tennessee), Roscoe Bartlett (R-Maryland), John Conyers (D-Michigan) Ron Paul (R-Texas), Michael Capuano (D-Massachusetts), Tim Johnson (R-Illinois) and Dan Burton (R-Indiana).
According to a release announcing the suit, the lawmakers are calling for “injunctive and declaratory relief to protect the plaintiffs and the country” from:
(1) the policy that a president may unilaterally go to war in Libya and other countries without a declaration of war from Congress, as required by Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution;
(2) the policy that a president may commit the United States to a war under the authority of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in violation of the express conditions of the North Atlantic Treaty ratified by Congress;
(3) the policy that a president may commit the United States to a war under the authority of the United Nations without authorization from Congress;
(4) from the use of previously appropriated funds by Congress for an unconstitutional and unauthorized war in Libya or other countries; and
(5) from the violation of the War Powers Resolution as a result of the Obama Administration’s established policy that the President does not require congressional authorization for the use of military force in wars like the one in Libya.
The Kucinich lawsuit is just the latest in a series of headaches for the administration related to Libya.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2011/06/lawmakers-sue-president-obama-over-illegal-libya-war.html