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CNN anchor Chris Cuomo delivered a stinging rebuke to both Democratic and Republican House lawmakers who on Thursday voted against limiting President Donald Trumps war-making powers against Iran.

The House voted 224 to 194 to limit the presidents ability to launch an attack against Iran without getting approval first, Cuomo explained. This is not a new idea thats what is in the Constitution. My argument, I cant believe it wasnt unanimous.

Only three Republicans in the Democratic-controlled House supported the resolution. EightDemocratsvoted against. Cuomo said it wasnt about the GOP just choosing Trump over the truth.

Theres some of that, but Democrats have been anxious to give war power to presidents as well, he noted. This has been going on for a long time and its gotten worse and it is the worse example of congressional cowardice.

Now, though, were hearing really obnoxious comments that is making this partisan, he added, citing Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) claim that Democrats are in love with terrorists for not backing Trumps military escalation with Iran.

Cuomo ripped Collins for trying to divide Americans at a time that it is life and death that we come together.

Shame on you and every Trumper and never-Trumper who voted against this, he added.

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Chris Cuomo Rips Every Lawmaker Who Voted Against Limiting Donald Trump's War Powers - HuffPost

Donald Trump does not strut the world stage as Augustus triumphant. On Wednesday he might have commanded that Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon we will never let that happen. But as he slurred at his autocue, he conveyed only ritualised abuse of Iran and pleas to Nato for help, a Nato he once majestically derided. I sensed we were seeing the USs days as world hegemon dribbling away. Even Trumps Republican ally Mike Lee called the Iran briefing the worst briefing Ive seen at least on a military issue in my nine years in the Senate.

All empires outstay their declared purpose, let alone their welcome. All end messily the operative word is all be they Roman, Napoleonic, British or Soviet. All are vanquished not by superior power, but by self-delusion and geography. The British empire had neither the right nor the need to invade far-flung parts of Asia and Africa. It was defeated by them. The US has claimed the right to intervene in theatres as diverse as South America, the far east, east Africa and a portfolio of Muslim states. Justification varies from retaliation and deterrence to self-defence and the instilling of democracy.

The USs intentions have often been noble, but good intentions camouflage power projection. When your drones can kill anyone anywhere, the temptation is insuperable. If you think you can police the world from a bunker in Nevada, why not try?

Trumps instinct was once that of a classic American isolationist. As he reiterated to Congress last February, Great nations do not fight endless wars the hour has come to at least try for peace. He was announcing withdrawal from Syria and more tentatively from Afghanistan. Yet he is still there. The US is fighting six wars also in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Libya. None has any conceivable relevance to its own security.

Imperialism sticks to politics like glue. Even as common sense screams withdrawal, staying offers the populist an opportunity for glory. It was thus that British ministers in the 1950s and 60s fought to hold on to Aden, Kenya and Cyprus. Today Boris Johnson craves the machismo of a totally pointless carrier force in the far east. Some imperial ghost seems to sneak down from the India Office attic to stalk Downing Street at night.

Twenty years of western interventions in the Muslim world have rested on two falsehoods. One is that terrorism poses an existential threat to western democracies, grotesquely underrating their inherent stability. The other is that intervention can remedy such a threat, can enforce obedience and even democracy on victim states. I remember watching rightwing US thinktankers trying to administer Iraq from Baghdads Green Zone in the months after the 2003 invasion. By what right?

Alien intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign states is immoral, specifically banned under chapter one of the UN charter. That ban was supposedly overridden by Tony Blairs much-cited responsibility to protect civilian populations. But as the casualties mounted, protection became mere cover for ceaseless wars of western aggression. That is why the UN is all but absent from these interventions. As George Bush said, I leave the UN to lawyers.

The issue now is not whether we can any longer plant the flowers of democracy in fields we have drenched in blood. It is how to get the hell out. The sight of Trump ranting against Iran and inflicting on it yet further sanctions was like the final scene of a tragic opera. He seemed a man trapped.

Two American presidents played a significant role in the demise of British imperialism. Franklin D Roosevelt told Winston Churchill that the USs involvement in the second world war was strictly on condition that Britain dissolved its empire. The US would not defend it. John Foster Dulles, who was later US secretary of state, said in 1945 that his was the first colony to have won independence from Britain, and it expected others to follow. This advice was fiercely echoed in 1956 by Dwight D Eisenhower, appalled at Britains invasion of Suez.

Iraqi politicians this week joined the anti-imperial cause by demanding that American forces be withdrawn from their soil. All Trump could do was refuse, despite having previously pledged to do just that. Even in its hour of insecurity, 17 years of American occupation had left Iraq just desperate for it to end. It knows it must live at peace with its powerful neighbour, Iran, and this requires it to be no longer to be a tool of American presidential machismo. Likewise Afghanistan must find its own accommodation with the Taliban and with its neighbour, Pakistan.

As for Britain, its 20-year creep under Washingtons coat-tails, by Blair, David Cameron and now Boris Johnson, is humiliating and expensive. It should be offering the advice of an old and honest friend, whose history has so paralleled the USs predicament. Instead, it offers only the cringe of a lackey awaiting a reward, in this case an implausible post-Brexit trade deal.

As empires crumble, stuff happens. It could yet be that Trumps killing of Qassem Suleimani jolts every participant in this game to realise that it is just not working. The US president is a man of emotional and unpredictable responses. He could indeed pull out of Iraq, leaving it to separate from Kurdistan and do a deal with Tehran. He could leave Syria to its fate, and leave Afghanistan to the tender mercies of Islamabad. As for Britain, at last it could have nothing whatsoever to do with this mess.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

See more here:
Donald Trumps rant against Iran is the howl of a dying empire - The Guardian

Lets start this piece with two provocative claims. The first, which is hotly contested by legal experts, is that President Donald Trump broke the law when he ordered an airstrike that killed Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a powerful Iranian paramilitary leader.

The second claim is that it doesnt matter.

Part of the reason why the legal question is academic is that, even if we assume the strike on Soleimani was illegal, its hardly clear whether the courts can do anything to remedy an illegal assassination. Its not like a judge could issue a writ of resurrection that restores life to the people killed in this American airstrike. And federal courts cant hold a criminal trial of anyone involved in the Soleimani attack unless an increasingly partisan Justice Department agrees to prosecute. Nor is a judicial order likely to calm tensions between the United States and Iran.

The killing of Soleimani is the latest in a series of escalations and retaliations that began with Trumps decision to pull out of the nuclear deal former President Barack Obama struck with Iran and includes Iranian attacks on American assets within the Middle East. Not long after the attack, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, Irans supreme leader, threatened revenge.

Trump, meanwhile, threatened massive retaliation if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets. He claimed the US would target 52 Iranian sites some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture (intentionally targeting historic monuments, works of art, or places of worship which constitute the cultural or spiritual heritage of peoples is a war crime).

Although there are some theoretical actions the courts could take to deescalate this conflict its at least possible, for example, for the courts to order the military not to conduct future attacks on Iranian leaders without seeking congressional authorization such judicial intervention is unlikely.

The federal judiciary frequently defers to the presidents decisions on national security, even when those decisions shock the conscience far more than the attack on Soleimani. Just think about the Supreme Courts decision to uphold detention centers for Japanese Americans in Korematsu v. United States (1944), or its more recent ruling upholding Trumps travel ban despite the presidents own statements indicating that the real purpose of the ban was to target Muslims.

If the courts cant serve as a check on the executive branch, Congress could certainly step in. The Supreme Court established very early in American history, in Little v. Barreme (1804), that Congress may impose statutory limits on the presidents war powers. Congress could also take the more drastic step of removing Trump via impeachment if it determines he acted illegally.

But any congressional intervention would require the Republican-controlled Senate to play ball, and GOP lawmakers appear to be lining up behind Trump. As Scott Anderson, former legal adviser to the State Department and a current fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, told me, The only meaningful check is a political one, meaning elections or maybe impeachment.

With impeachment unlikely to succeed, that leaves the 2020 election as the last remaining check on Trump. As a practical matter, the US has few enforceable checks against a reckless commander in chief. Unlike many of our peer nations, the US doesnt even have the ability to call an early election or replace our chief executive if they lose majority support in the legislature.

Theres a great deal of disagreement among legal experts regarding when a president may lawfully target another nation. Some believe that, with rare exceptions, Congress must vote to permit such a strike. Others take a more permissive approach, arguing the president should be able to act to prevent sudden attacks on US personnel.

Part of the reason this area of the law is unclear is that the courts are often reluctant to intervene in matters of national security. Neither the members of this court nor most federal judges begin the day with briefings that may describe new and serious threats to our nation and its people, the Supreme Court explained in 2008. Judges are often hyperaware of the fact that they know very little about matters of national security, so they typically defer to the elected branches in cases involving sensitive and weighty interests of national security and foreign affairs.

The stakes in national security cases are high, and no judge wants to hand down an order that prevents the government from stopping a terrorist attack. As Rachel VanLandingham, a professor at Southwestern Law School and former legal adviser to senior US military commanders, told me, Courts have been deferential because they dont want to screw it up and not have a country anymore.

One consequence of judicial deference is that there is fairly little case law explaining when the executive branch can and cannot take military action. Instead, most of the legal opinions in this space were drafted by executive branch officials. According to Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School who led the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel during the second Bush administration, Practically all of the law in this area has been developed by executive branch lawyers justifying unilateral presidential uses of force.

These lawyers, Goldsmith warned, view unilateral presidential power very broadly.

I heard similar concerns from Eugene Fidell, an expert on national security law who teaches at Yale Law School. We have drifted too far from the shore in terms of the limits that the Constitution imposes, he told me. The Constitution, Fidell argued, requires a declaration of war unless you have an attack or an imminent attack on the United States.

Congress, he added, has not declared war on Iran. And we dont know of any imminent threat to the United States.

VanLandingham, meanwhile, was more sympathetic to the view that the Soleimani strike is legal. She was also more sanguine about the idea that executive branch officials have taken the lead in interpreting much of our national security law. Many of these officials, she pointed out, are service members. VanLandingham further argued that the military tends to be risk averse because it is their people who are going to die.

She agreed with Fidell that the president may respond to an imminent attack or, as she put it, The president has inherent authority to repel sudden attack. But she also emphasized that the executive branch has consistently understood this authority to extend to attacks on American service members or diplomats overseas, and that Congress has not stepped in to prevent the executive from exercising such authority.

We dont know the intel. We dont know how imminent this attack would be, VanLandingham was careful to point out. But if the US had intelligence showing that Soleimani was about to execute an attack on American personnel, that would be sufficient to justify the airstrike. (The question of whether the US had such intelligence is disputed, even within the administration.)

Alternatively, the Trump administration might look to nearly 20-year-old laws authorizing military force during the Bush administration. In a letter to House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Eliot Engel last June, a State Department official suggested that 2001 and 2002 statutes authorizing military force against al-Qaeda and in Iraq might permit military force to be used against Iran when necessary to defend US or partner forces engaged in counterterrorism operations or operations to establish a stable, democratic Iraq.

But any claim that these old statutes permit an attack on Iran, according to Anderson, stretches the law to its furthest limits. The Iranian regime, he noted, is seen as apostates by al-Qaeda. He was also dubious that the US could open hostilities against a new nation based on an authorization of military force that dealt with different circumstances nearly two decades ago.

Nevertheless, Anderson agreed that the courts were unlikely to step in, and he warned that the statutes themselves are broad enough that it is hard to say whether the Soleimani attack is expressly prohibited by either the 2001 or the 2002 law.

One of the striking things about much of American national security law is that it vests extraordinary trust in the president. The 2001 authorization of military force, for example, provides that the president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Does this mean Trump could announce that he has determined Canada planned 9/11 and claim legal authorization to invade our northern neighbor? When I put this question to some of the experts I spoke with, they recoiled from the suggestion that Congress accidentally authorized a future war with Canada. But its hard to find language in the statute itself that prohibits such a war.

A similar issue arose in Trump v. Hawaii (2018), the travel ban case. One of the legal issues at question was whether Trump had the power to cut off travel from various nations under a statute that provides that:

Whenever the president finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or non-immigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the Hawaii ruling, this statute exudes deference to the president in every clause. He wasnt wrong.

So much of Americas national security law was drafted on the assumption that the president will be a person of honor and integrity or, for that matter, a person of basic competence and judgment who will act to protect national security, even when many of us might disagree with their decisions.

Though VanLandingham takes a relatively broad view of the presidents ability to use military force, she insisted that something can be lawful but awful. Congress delegated vast powers to the president on the assumption that the White House will set up a process ensuring that the right information flowed to the appropriate decision-makers and that the president will make the best decision on hand.

But how can you trust a president who was just impeached for using Americas national security architecture to try to undermine a political rival? What is our system supposed to do with a president who, in the words of one recently retired Republican Congress member, is psychologically, morally, intellectually, and emotionally unfit for office?

This president, in VanLandinghams words, doesnt have the best track record for putting the best interests of national security first. Yet Trump still enjoys the same broad powers and massive deference enjoyed by presidents who did act in good faith.

Our country has, quite self-consciously, given one person, the president, an enormous sprawling military and enormous discretion to use it in ways that can easily lead to a massive war, Goldsmith, the Harvard professor, tweeted. That is our system: one person decides.

In such a system, we cannot rely on the courts to save us from the president, nor can we expect this Congress to do so. There is only one remedy remaining, and that remedy cannot be used until November.

Read the original:
Iran war: The only check on Trump is the 2020 election - Vox.com

Qassem Soleimani was not just an enemy of the United States and the peoples of the Middle Easthe was an enemy to many of our European allies, too.

Hundreds of European combatants died during the Iraq War. As a percentage of their population, the United Kingdom deployed more troops per citizen to Iraq than any other country, including the United States. Spain and the Netherlands deployed 1,300 troops each, Italy 3,200, and South Korea 3,600. Australias 2,000 troop contribution might look small, but it was 5 percent of the countrys active-duty personnel. The list goes on.

The general public seems to have forgotten that the Iraq War was a multilateral effort, with allies from across the world were involvedeven though very few of them had direct and immediate interests in Iraq. Nevertheless, these allies participated, some in small numbers, and others in larger ones, and they all paid human, financial, and political prices for their participationprices which Soleimani made sure would be as high as possible.

More recently, our European allies have had their societies and politics disrupted by the flow of Syrian civil war refugees, which was also a Soleimani project.

And yet, despite the fact that our allies had an interest in seeing Soleimani dead, their responses have been muted, at best. Why? Because they neither trust Donald Trump to act prudently throughout escalation, nor like the man.

They have good reasons, on both counts.

Podcast January 09 2020

On today's Bulwark Megacast, Sarah Longwell and Ben Parker join host Charlie Sykes to discuss the President's Iran speec...

From Japan to Australia to Germany to the United Kingdom, the response has been exactly the same: Please dont escalate!

Boris Johnsons statement was the closest to an endorsement of Trumps decision, in which Johnson said that he doesnt lament Soleimanis death. Frances minister for Europe came closest to an outright condemnation, saying that we have woken up to a more dangerous world. She continued by saying that Frances role is not to take sides.

Actually, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abes response was probably more unequivocal. Abe had been trying to mediate between the United States and Iran, and he said that he was humiliated by the strike.

Thus far, there are no reports of any direct talks about the Soleimani operation between Trump and foreign leaders. But Vladimir Putin is trying to make the most out of the situation by driving a wedge between the United States and its allies. He has invited German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Russia to talk about the situation and had a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron about the matter.

And instead of cultivating our allies, the Trump administration is making Putins job easier. Reflecting on the situation, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo complained that the Europeans havent been as helpful as I wish that they could be. The Brits, the French, the Germans all need to understand that what we did, what the Americans did, saved lives in Europe as well.

Who would have thought that three years spent constantly antagonizing Americas allies would result in those allies being not as helpful as America wishes?

Galaxy brain.

The hallmark of Trumps approach to foreign policy has been showing contempt for Americas allies and an affinity for Americas enemies.

He has made a habit of kicking Europeans left and rightmost recently leaving a NATO summit in the middle because his feelings were hurt. He openly admires Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un while imposing tariffs on our European allies.

Even in the conduct of the Soleimani operation itself, Trump treated our allies with contempt. The British foreign secretary says that he found out about the strike from the news. This was an operation that could have put British and other European citizens and diplomats in the region at risk and Trump did not even give Boris Johnsons government a heads up?

And if the Trump administration was worried that Americas closest ally might have warned the Iranians about the operation, then Soleimani was the least of our problems.

When it comes to Iran, nearly every action from this administration has been carried out over the objections of our European allies.

Geopolitics, like all politics, is a team sport and requires making compromises. America cannot delegate its national interest to Europe, but neither can it affront out allies without imposing costs.

Allies often need to compromise with one another, and goodwill and niceties go a long way in making these compromises less painful. Alliance management is one of the most, if not the most, difficult task in diplomacy. Donald Trumps to hell with allies and why are our allies not more helpful brand of diplomacy doesnt actually put America first. It makes Americas strategic situation more dangerous and uncertain.

It is often said that Donald Trump views the world not like a politician, but like a gangster. He believes that the weak owe the strong, and that people either cooperate with his wishes, or become targets of his ire.

The world can work that way, but only for a time. Eventually, the complexities of politics assert themselves. Trumps administration has been incapable of making meaningful compromise with Americas allies and now, at a moment of instability, our allies are nowhere to be found.

Thats bad enough. Whats worse is that our president and his secretary of state seem surprised.

More here:
Trumps Treatment of U.S. Allies Comes Home to Roost - The Bulwark

Project Veritas Action Fund (PVA) Appeared in the United States First Circuit Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to Challenge the Nations Broadest Recording LawSection 99 of Massachusetts Law. PVA Argued that Undercover Recordings are at the core of citizens First Amendment Rights.Massachusetts is the Only State in the Country to Outright Ban All Secret Audio Recordings.Eleven States have Found Ways to Respect Both the First Amendment and Privacy Concerns; PVA Expects the Same from the Massachusetts Legislature.The ACLUs Sister Lawsuit was Also the Subject of the District Court Judges Decree and Appeared in Court with PVA, Focusing its Arguments Solely in Favor of Secretly Recording Police Officers.

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(Boston, MA) Project Veritas Action Fund appeared in the US First Circuit Court of Appeals for the First Circuit yesterday to challenge Section 99 of Massachusetts law. This is a law that broadly restricts any sort of undercover recording.

PVA argues that, as a result of this law, the American public will miss out on newsworthy information derived from such recordings. Further, PVA states that Section 99 infringes on citizens First Amendment rights.

There are eleven states that believe it is the legislatures responsibility to provide some level of privacy protection in conversations, but Massachusetts is the only state to fully apply privacy protections without consideration for the citizens right to secretly record. PVA argued that Massachusetts, like those eleven states, should narrow its law.

PVA has asked the court to strike down the Section 99 law facially, that is to declare it entirely void. PVA wants the court to allow the Massachusetts legislature a chance to go back to the drafting table and write a new law that complies with the First Amendment.

According to PVAs attorney Ben Barrs observation of the oral argument, it appeared that all of the judges (including former US Supreme Court Associate Justice, David Souter) expressed real skepticism about the Constitutionality of the Massachusetts lawreferring to it as sweeping too broadly in several of their questions.

Ben Barr also observed that the specific line of questioning examines the states interest in securing privacy against the means the state employs to secure that privacy. In this case, an outright ban is simply too suppressive of speech and narrower tools could be used to protect truly private conversations.

In addition, the judges hinted that individuals were free to guard their own privacysuch as removing a discussion to a truly private placeinstead of needing a law that simply prohibits newsgathering of items disclosed in public.

Here are a few of the exchanges between PVA Attorney Ben Barr, Judge Barron, and Judge Selya:

Ben Barr: Massachusetts makes a mockery of the most effective form of newsgathering, undercover journalism, by denying citizens the right to be able to go out into public, and to be able to gather information in the most effective way possible, that is, secret audio recording.

Judge Barron: What do you mean by public?

Ben Barr: I mean a place in particular where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. It brings me to the truly exceptional nature of Section 99.

Judge Barron: Just so I get it straight with the idea that everybody in this courtroom right now would have a First Amendment right to record these proceedings?

Ben Barr: Yes.

Judge Barron: Thats your position?

Ben Barr: Yes.

Judge Barron: Do you have a narrower position?

[laughter among those present]..

Judge Selya: Commonwealth has an interest in protecting the privacy of conversations. Everyone has some sort of right to the privacy of their conversations, full stop. And you can disagree with that as a matter of policy, but youve got to figure out why thats wrong as a matter of Constitutional law

Ben Barr: Primarily, it amounts to the tailoring and overbreadth issue, Judge Selya, while there is a legitimate governmental interest in protecting conversational privacy and 11 states have worked out test to do that. On the other end of the Constitutional equation is a right to be able to acquire information in public and report on that to the American people. So, being able to record a bribe occurring with a police officer on a

Judge Selya: But Massachusetts is talking not only about governmental privacy, theyre talking about the privacy of all participants in these conversations, which typically take place between a government official and a private citizen.

Ben Barr: Yes, and actually as was noted by Judge Barron earlier, it is entirely capable that government officials and individuals are able to safeguard their own privacy. If they have a confidential conversation, or an informant, theyre able meet in a private place. We are not alleging the right to be able to invade doctors offices or police stations

Judge Barron: Yeah, but you are saying that if I think that Ive taken precautions, that I sometimes might sit on a bench in the park and speak in what I think is in pretty confidential tones with someone else, and youre saying but Im at risk of someone having a recording device, and if I didnt notice it, that can then be sent all over the place, right?

Judge Selya: I want you to note that even in his hypotheticals, Judge Barron sees himself sitting on a bench.

(Laughter)

Judge Selya also addressed Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General, Eric Haskell:

Judge Selya to MA Assistant Attorney General Eric Haskell: Meeting with a confidential informant, if its done in public, whats wrong with that being recorded? If the police officer wants that meeting to be truly confidential, the police officer can control where the meeting is held. Easy enough to hold it in private.

Judge Selya to MA Assistant Attorney General Eric Haskell: Youre saying that if John Doe comes along, sees a police officer conversing with a politician, for example, they both have their backs turned to him, he holds out, in plain view of everybody, a tape recorder and turns it on, or a cell phone, and turns on the recording function, alright? They have their backs turned, but its in plain view to anyone who wants to walk. Everyone in the Boston Common sees it, except maybe the two people who were talking, and youre saying that is, or isnt, a violation of the statute?

The ACLU had a more limited vision of how to tackle the Massachusetts recording law.

Representing the ACLU was Jessie Rossman, who said that They focus exclusively on police officers, who, unlike other officials, are armed by the state and have the authority to take people into custody.

After the hearing, Ben Barr said:

We were pleased that the court held the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to accountability. This law is an outright ban on the most effective form of newsgatheringundercover journalismand deprives the public of important information. It is difficult to imagine it surviving todays review before the First Circuit.

If the First Amendment means anything, it means that citizens possess the power to hold accountable those in power. In 2020, using smartphones and digital recording devices to uncover political hypocrisy and self-dealing is the most effective means to do so and should be protected by the First Amendment.

Project Veritas Action Fund will never cease fighting for Americans Constitutional rights. It is imperative that individual citizens are allowed to perform their FirstAmendment right to report on public and private corruption. For many citizen journalists, undercover recording is the most effective way of delivering newsworthy facts to the public.

Originally posted here:
Project Veritas Action Fund Defends Citizens' First Amendment Rights for Undercover Secret Recording in First Circuit Court of Appeals - Project...