Moments ago, the United States Senate voted 61-36 to kill an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act offered by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) that would have given a six-month sunset to the authorizations for use of military force that were passed on Sept. 14, 2001, and again in 2002 in the run-up to the Iraq War.
"I rise today to oppose unauthorized, undeclared, and unconstitutional war," Paul declared yesterday, while getting his amendment scheduled for a vote. "None of the seven wars we're involved with now has anything to do with 9/11," he argued on last night's Hardball.
Paul's floor speech today was a stinging rebuke to Senate's "abdication" of responsibility to the executive branch in the waging of war, and the resulting interventionist promiscuity. "The neoconservatives and the neoliberals believe the president has unlimited authority," the senator complained. Watch the whole thing below:
Read Eli Lake's 2010 Reason article on "The 9/14 Presidency," and Brian Doherty's post this week on Paul's attempt to force Congress to perform arguably its most important constitutional function.
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