Sen. Mike Lee (R) UT, to his right is Sen. Rand Paul (R) KY

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Couple Of Republican Senators Interrupt Trump’s Victory Lap On Iran

Utah Republican Mike Lee hints the President might be acting a little bit too much like a king these days…

Eric J Scholl
4 min readJan 9, 2020

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Lee puts Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist 69 front and center in a fiery criticism of the White House’s imperious attitude toward explaining its attack on Iran. Part 69 of the Federalist Papers discusses the limitations of the President as Commander-and-Chief of the U.S. armed forces (at the time, the Army and Navy). And states:

“The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it.”

Hamilton continues that while the President has “command and direction” of the military, his power does not extend to:

“That of DECLARING of war and to the RAISING and REGULATING of fleets and armies, all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature.”

(Yeah, Hamilton did use ALL CAPS there, and often.)

And hey, Lee — known as a Libertarian and ultra-Conservative — says it better than we ever could, so watch this (click on the photo):

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Eric J Scholl
Eric J Scholl

Written by Eric J Scholl

Peabody award winning journalist. Streaming media pioneer. Played @ CBGB back in the day. Editor-In-Chief "The Chaos Report" www.thechaosreport.com

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