OBJECTION!

So let me get this straight. You think that if someone, anyone really, thinks that the president might have violated a law, they should be immediately thrown in jail until it’s resolved? Even the cleanest person in the world would be spending their entire term in a jail cell.

That’s not how anything works.

It’s very debatable whether he actually broke the law in this instance. Attacking Iran without congressional approval is allowed by the War Powers Resolution of 1973. The argument against that is that the powers outlined in that resolution are meant to be “emergency powers” but “emergency powers” are very easy to invoke and I’m not aware of any precedent of a president not being permitted to invoke them. And the US hasn’t formally declared war since WWII, so they’re invoked fairly often.

Getting more clearly restrictive laws in place would be a good thing, and getting Republicans on record as opposing them is only mostly useless (look, it’s a low bar) because it does at least make it a little harder for them to pass themselves off as “antiwar.”

People are reacting to the headline, but the article is basically the opposite of what most people assume. This is The Atlanic. Their problem is that the Democrats aren’t doing enough austerity.

Tbf, the US is heading towards a debt crisis. However, the reason for that is because of the absurdly bloated military budget and pointless adventurism, while the article frames it entirely in terms of “taxes are too low and we spend too much on social programs.” How are the Democrats supposed to win without promising the voters anything? This is never addressed. But that’s apparently the lesson the author thinks they should learn. Run on austerity, if you somehow manage to win, prioritize the debt - and then when they inevitably lose the next election because everyone’s lives got worse, the Republicans will have more money to play with to fund things like ICE and the Iran War.

It’s nonsense. Winning means promising QoL improvements and following through on them. Yeah the debt is a problem, but that’s exactly why military cuts are necessary. Trying to solve the debt problem just creates a political problem, it’s the sort of thing to worry about once you’ve already secured power.