So that was some kind of long weekend, eh? Whilst Americans were all mandatorily eatin' ribs and shooting babies out their twats in accordance with the official definition of that which is Labor Day (thanks, Union Thugs!) President Obama went into the Rose Garden to confuse everyone with speeches about some place called "Syria" and "chemical weapons" and also something about "congressional authorization before bombing shit" and fucking up everything "I want to go to war noooow" presidents who totally never heard of the War Powers Act have gotten off on doing for 40 years. Leave it to the Constitutional scholar, we mean, obvious black guy, to pull some sort of rope-a-dope on Congress, which much prefers to whine about his "executive overreach" every five minutes to now be all pissed about him wanting them to get involved somehow.

For three decades after Watergate, conservatives like Dick Cheney and those of his ilk sought to increase executive branch power that they felt had been eroded by liberal congressional reformers. George W. Bush’s legal team crafted controversial opinions that emboldened the White House on a wide range of national security areas, from interrogation to surveillance.

That makes the move by Obama to hand a piece of the messy situation in Syria to Congress a clear step in the other direction — an abdication of power to Congress at a moment when he has no good solutions.

As we have previously stated, the official Wonkette Editorial Policy on Syria is: ?????? We are not sure that busting up in another Middle Eastern country won't open some can of awesome Taliban worms, but we also do not think that hosing suburbs with chemical gases is a very nice way to run a government. We think a good solution would be for everyone to stop being dicks all the time so we do not have to think about this at all. However, we also think we are pretty sure that asking Congress to get involved in whether or not we are going to do anything about it is probably the more constitutional way to go about things, even though Congress sucks.

John Yoo, the very nice Bush lawyer who never even heard of Congress and just went ahead and wrote whatever memos were necessary for us to get our torture on, argues that “Legislatures are slow — Congress will not vote on the authorization until the second week of September. They are fractious … They do not act with unity, secrecy, and speed.” Because if anything, bombing the fuck out of anyone should always be done in secret haste, without any of that "supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses" bullshit. Last year of course, John Yoo thought Obamz exceeded executive authority for refusing to deport brown people and now Obamz is weakening executive authority by asking for congressional authority before bombing brown people. The John Yoo point is, if it involves doing something bad to brown people, it's OK and HURRY!

The fiercely mustachioed former UN Ambassador, presidential hopeful and bombing advocate John Bolton also thinks this Congress thing is gonna take too long, and even stopped screaming that we must bomb Iran now long enough to criticize the president for not bombing Syria now, interrupting his previously scheduled plan to scream about how we should be bombing North Korea now: “The reason that you vest executive power in one person instead of 535 is to get something done.” Like bombing North Korea, Iran and now Syria. NOW goddammit.

The best part of this decision to hang on a minute and see what everyone thinks first cause of how this is a democracy and all, is maybe that John Boehner and Rand Paul have both had to say a nice thing about the President, even though Boehner was probably just day drunk and Rand Paul expects the President to do what Congress says, especially if they tell him no. But now John McCain and Lindsey Graham are very excited to have private time with the Pres, and get some guns to the Free Syrian Army, just like Reagan and his Freedom Fighters in Nicaragua y'all! And if anything, we should just always do what Reagan did, forever. And hurry the fuck up about it.

[politico.com]