Obama in Libya: a Clear and Arrogant Violation of our Constitution.

• Author: Kucinich, Dennis
• Position: Barack Obama - Speech

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This is a condensed version of the speech Representative Kucinich gave on March 31 on the House floor.

MR. SPEAKER, THE CRITICAL issue before this nation today is not Libyan democracy; it is American democracy. Our dear nation stands at a crossroads. The direction we take will determine not what kind of nation we are but what kind of nation we will become. Will we become a nation which plots in secret to wage war? Will we become a nation that observes our Constitution only in matters of convenience?

Will we become a nation which destroys the unity of the world community painstakingly pieced together from the ruins of World War II, a war which itself followed a war to end all wars?

Now, once again we stand poised at a precipice--forced to the edge by ah Administration which has thrown caution to the winds and our Constitution to the ground.

It is abundantly clear from a careful reading of our Declaration of Independence that our nation was born from nothing less than the rebellion of the human spirit against the arrogance of power.

The power to declare war is firmly and explicitly vested in the Congress of the United States under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

Let us make no mistake about it, dropping 2,000-pound bombs and unleashing the massive firepower of our Air Force on the capital of a sovereign state is in fact an act of war and no amount of legal acrobatics can make it otherwise.

It is that same arrogance of power which the former Senator from Arkansas, J. William Fulbright, saw shrouded in the deceit which carried us into the abyss of the war in Vietnam. We determined we would never again see another Vietnam. It was the awareness of the unchecked power and arrogance of the executive which led Congress to pass the War Powers Act.

The Congress through the War Powers Act provided the executive with an exception to unilaterally respond only when the nation was in actual or imminent danger: to "repel sudden attacks."

Today we are in a constitutional crisis because our chief executive has assumed for himself powers to wage war which are neither expressly defined nor implicit in the Constitution, nor permitted under the War Powers Act. This is a challenge not just to the Administration, but to Congress itself: The President has no right to wrest that fundamental power from Congress--and we have no right to cede it to him.

We, Members of Congress, can no more absolve our President of his responsibility to...