The Congress shall have Power . . . To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress; . . .
BOMBING ANOTHER COUNTRY, abducting its elected leader and kidnapping them as Trump reportedly did during the night is an act of war by any unabridged meaning of the phrase "act of war." The U.S. Constitution supposedly gives the power to make war to the U.S. Congress but that's clearly a lie, Trump has committed war on Venezuela, certainly with the motive of getting its oil for his billionaire and millionaire friends and you can be certain that his crime family, including his in-laws are in it for their cut of the action.
The Library of Congress website both claims that Article I of the Constitution establishes that sole power to declare war, claims that "The Declare War Clause is a central element of Congress’s war powers," and oh, so conveniently, show how under the Constitution as it really is, that most important feature of the thing has been made meaningless by a combination of Congressional cowardice and Supreme Court corruption.
ArtI.S8.C11.2.1 Overview of Declare War Clause:
[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; . . .
The Declare War Clause is a central element of Congress’s war powers and its meaning is among those most heavily debated.1 The Supreme Court has observed that only Congress has the power to declare war,2 but the implications of this exclusive assignment are not well-settled. In particular, the relationship between Congress’s power to declare war and the President’s war powers granted under Article II of the Constitution is a subject of significant disagreement.3
The first draft of the Constitution considered in Philadelphia in 1787 would have given Congress the power to make war, but the Framers substituted the word declare in what James Madison described as an effort to ensure that the President was empowered to repel sudden attacks.4 Under Congress’s interpretation of the Constitution, the President may introduce troops into hostile circumstances if Congress has (1) declared war, (2) specifically authorized the President to use force, or (3) there is a national emergency created by an attack on the United States or its territories.5 The executive branch claims much broader authority and asserts that the Constitution empowers the President to initiate and engage in many types of military action without congressional authorization.6
While this interbranch debate remains active, other questions concerning the Declare War Clause have been settled by longstanding practice and judicial opinions. For example, the Supreme Court has recognized that Congress need not issue a formal declaration of war to authorize the United States to engage in military action.
It must be pointed out that none of those loopholes apply in the case of Trump bombing Venezuela and kidnapping its president, though that won't matter in the slightest. I doubt the Library of Congress will even bother to revise this clearly lie filled posting in the future to match reality as it really is.
It is to be assumed that the Congress, so notably full of lawyers, some of them actually deemed "Constitutional scholars" and that those who are appointed to the Supreme Court are similarly expert in the document - though as the Republican members of the Rehnquist and Roberts Court, with exactly two exceptions, show, that assumption is, itself, bullshit - have made the most serious and momentous of powers delegated to the most democratically vulnerable branch utterly meaningless. Such is the true nature of the U.S. Constitution, its lore and history and its reality as opposed to the lies that comprise such "Constitutional scholarship." The next stupidly written part of that comprises not only an open barn door but an entirely open side of the horse shed that doesn't need to be escaped.
7 Congress also can, by statute, authorize the President to use force within defined parameters that do not rise to the level of a general declaration of war.8 The United States has issued declarations of war against eleven countries during five conflicts, but it has not formally declared war since World War II.9 As a result, statutory authorizations have become the predominant method for Congress to permit military action since the Second World War.10
The Supreme Court has also observed that the Declare War Clause confers broad authority upon Congress to pursue the war effort.11 The power to Declare War, the Supreme Court stated in 1870, involves the power to prosecute it by all means and in any manner in which war may be legitimately prosecuted.12 In line with this interpretation, Congress has enacted an extensive set of statutes that trigger a host of special wartime authorities concerning the military, foreign trade, energy, communications, alien enemies, and other issues if Congress declares war.13
The United States doesn't have a Constitution that means a goddamned thing, the Roberts Court , the most corrupt Supreme Court in our history, up to and most of all legalizing open bribery and corruption, as long as payment is made after what is bought is delivered and, worst of all, making Donald Trump an absolute dictator for four years - or more if he seizes power for longer, and don't think Vance won't try that as well. The United States is a lawless country due to the lies and dodges and corruption of the lawyers on the Supreme Courts since WWII who have allowed that power grab by the executive with the acquiescence of partisans on both sides of the Congress - again many of those giving that non-Constitutional power to presidents being not only lawyers but "Constitutional scholars."
Once a road through the actual meaning of the Constitution has been cut by the goddamned Supreme Court, it is there until it is sealed up by an amendment. Actually, under the real as opposed to the pretend Constitution, that's not true because the Marbury power, as has been seen over and over again, especially in the most corrupt of Courts, which is a majority of them, gives them the real power to nullify and amend the Constitution at their whim or ideological desire or, now under the corruption of the Roberts Court, as their patrons so order it up. Destroying the Marbury power grab is essential as the history of the United States proves, any court which is granted or grabs for itself such a power means that no written or unwritten Constitution means a goddamned thing in and of itself.
I doubt that anything but a total revision of the Constitution INCLUDING A CHANGE FROM THE INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT OURS INVENTED will reign in the most corrupt, the most overtly and literally criminal president from committing he most serious of crimes, especially if the Court has been as corrupted as ours is. Trump is that and the Roberts Court and the Republican-fascist congress is as guilty as he and his drunken, steroid stimulated Secretary of mayhem, Hegseth and the military officers and others who have carried out these grotesquely illegal acts. I don't expect any of them will suffer any consequences because the United States is a lawless country.
