Subsequently, many Democrats and some Republicans turned against the war, claimed (a bit disingenuously) that they’d been tricked, repudiated their votes, and in many cases, ran against Bush and “his war” in 2004, 2006 and 2008. Notably, however, these war opponents never sought to do the one thing they had the clear-cut power to do: move to revoke the war authorization. Another course might have been to invoke the still-never-tested “War Powers Act.”

That Democrats might have suffered politically for adopting either course is certainly true. Republicans would have attacked them for abandoning the troops, etc. But that is neither here nor there where the matter of Presidential and Congressional powers is concerned.

Perhaps we would have seen a Constitutional crisis, if Congressional Democrats had exercised their unquestioned authority. Perhaps Bush and Cheney would have insisted the President had the power to continue waging war without an authorization resolution (as Truman did in Korea where he deliberately never even asked Congress to affirm what he presumed was an inherent Presidential power). Perhaps they would have thrown the issue to the Supreme Court. We’ll never know because the issue was never raised.

And your comment “we are not at war” reflects such manifest ignorance of the realities of the conduct of foreign policy and the gradations of conflict as to be beneath you.

As for the remainder of your rejoinder (“The worst thing that has happened since the end of World War II is the extent to which the President has been given nearly universal carte blanche in foreign policy matters”), that is certainly an argument that can be made. I would disagree with it, but it is a different argument. The premise is wrong; those who disagree with a President’s policy frequently claim wrongly that he exercises authority he either lacks or which has, in fact, been authorized and, perhaps most significantly, funded.

But of course, the key is in your last sentence: Congress “gave Bush unlimited authority to do whatever he wanted….” You come around to making the point for which condemn Cheney’s comment: the purported lack of congressional authorization. In the end, you concede that the Administration did, in fact, have “unlimited authority.”

And comparing Cheney to Aaron Burr is just silly.

The real question is what the President’s powers actually are.

Cheney keeps mentioning in the interview issues regarding the President’s powers during a time of war. Well, we are not at war. No war has been declared by Congress, and, the last time I looked, that part of the Constitution has never been amended.

The worst thing that has happened since the end of World War II is the extent to which the President has been given nearly universal carte blanche in foreign policy matters. In times of emergency, that is clearly necessary, but the power has been used in a unilateral manner in what are clearly not emergency situations.

The Iraq War being a prime example. Constitutionally, the United States should not have invaded Iraq unless Congress was willing to actually declare war. They never did that and instead gave Bush unlimited authority to do whatever he wanted regardless of the evidence to the contrary.

And as to the notion of whether “If the president during war decides to do something to protect the country, is it legal,” of course, the legal presumption is that it IS legal. He commented on a “general proposition,” with no specifics. He never said that an exercise of presidential power is unreviewable by the courts (Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer) or Congress (through exercise of the impeachment power).

Cheney, of course, never said “if the President decides to do it, it’s not illegal, and it’s not reviewable by Congress.” Any suggestion that he did say so misrepresents his actual statements, and sounds more like the moonbat Left than a reasonable construction of his statement or his actions.