On January 14, a “war powers resolution” went down to defeat in the US Senate on a 50-50 vote, with vice president JD Vance breaking the tie.

The resolution, which would have required US president Donald Trump to at least casually mention to Congress that he planned more military misadventures in Venezuela before, rather than after, launching such misadventures, was a half-hearted half-measure, but somehow only half of US Senators could bring themselves to go even that far.

Let’s go over the way things are supposed to work:

The US Constitution assigns the power to declare war to Congress, not to the president.

If the president attacks another country without such a declaration, it’s not a war, it’s just a crime  — a “high crime” legally meriting and ethically requiring that president’s impeachment and removal from office.

Unfortunately,  presidents have been getting away with such crimes on a routine basis since the end of World War 2. The list is too long to fit in an op-ed, but a few high points include Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Those conflicts weren’t wars, at least so far as US law was concerned. They were criminal acts carried out by lawless presidents with the acquiescence — and often co-conspiracy — of Congress.

Toward the end of the Vietnam fiasco, Congress passed (and overrode Richard Nixon’s veto of) something called the War Powers Resolution of 1973.

Nixon’s veto message claimed that the Resolution included “unconstitutional restrictions” on his power to kill as many people as he pleased, when and how it pleased him to kill those people.

What it actually included was an unconstitutional — absent ratification by 3/4 of the states’ legislatures —  repeal of the Constitution’s Article I, Section 8 assignment of the power to declare war solely and exclusively to Congress.

The Resolution supposedly gave the president wiggle room to engage in illegal military operations if he  got congressional “authorization” or made up a “national emergency,” and as long as he subsequently bothered to tell Congress about it.

Why would Congress (a notoriously power-hungry body) try so hard to give up its power to declare war? Because if there’s anything a politician hates more than he or she loves power, it’s being held responsible for the consequences of exercising that power. By trying to give up its power, Congress thought it could also rid itself of culpability.

The Senate had one job to do. It wasn’t an especially hard job, it wouldn’t have had any great effect (even if it passed the House, Trump would have vetoed it), and it didn’t even meet the bare minimum constitutional standard.

And yet 50 Senators, and the vice-president acting as president of the Senate, couldn’t bring themselves to get that one little tiny, insignificant job done.

One more confirmation of Lysander Spooner’s observation:

“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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