Wasn't it helpful to have a "liberal" Democrat in the White House to make the final stroke of the pen and abolish the constitution? Could you imagine if Bush had done this? The outcry? But with Obama in there the left is largely silent, and the right are ever-obsessed with irrelevant "culture war" crap. Culture war dog-whistle terms distract Republicans like moving objects distract cats.

Not saying Bush was innocent of course. Just pointing out the continuity of the decay of America's ideals regardless of which party sits in power.

> Wasn't it helpful to have a "liberal" Democrat in the White House to make the final stroke of the pen and abolish the constitution?

I literally do not remember any president in my life who hasn't been accused of making the last stroke of the pen and abolishing the Constitution. And we've been in "permanent war" since, at least, the beginning of WWII (admittedly, you wouldn't notice it was anything other than normal war until well into the Cold War, but the "permanent war" isn't something that started with Obama, or even with Bush the Younger's "War on Terra".)

Vietname, Iraq I, Korea, etc. were declared but they were declared on specific enemies and thus had sunsets.

I do agree with your general point. We have been on this slippery slope for a very long time.

The closest thing to a declaration of war in Vietnam was the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which, while it mentioned Vietnam in its preamble, didn't mention any specific enemy in its operative clauses, and was, in fact, completely open-ended. The operative text of the resolution follows:

  Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
  the United States of America in Congress assembled, That 
  the Congress approves and supports the determination of  
  the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all 
  necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the 
  forces of the United States and to prevent further 
  aggression.

  Sec. 2. The United States regards as vital to its 
  national interest and to world peace the maintenance of 
  international peace and security in Southeast Asia. 
  Consonant with the Constitution of the United States 
  and the Charter of the United Nations and in accordance 
  with its obligations under the Southeast Asia Collective 
  Defense Treaty, the United States is, therefore, 
  prepared, as the President determines, to take all 
  necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to 
  assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast 
  Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in 
  defense of its freedom.

  Sec. 3. This resolution shall expire when the President 
  shall determine that the peace and security of the area 
  is reasonably assured by international conditions 
  created by action of the United Nations or otherwise, 
  except that it may be terminated earlier by concurrent 
  resolution of the Congress.

Exactly. And, perhaps more importantly, neither was the Cold War used to justify so many actions that would only be allowable in actual war time.

Actually, it was. In fact, many of things that are happening now and are the focus of that complaint were also done during the Cold War, to the point when in one of the brief moments of reactions against those extremes at the end of the Nixon/Vietnam era where the Cold War excesses had reached a perceived (local, at least) maximum, attempts were made to put legal limits on them in. E.g., the War Powers Resolution and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Let's explicitly narrow it to domestic actions (i.e., the context of this discussion).

Also, the phrase I used "so many actions".

That is, my post was not intended to assert that war powers had never been abused in the past.

You mean, like the use of the state of national threat to justify intrusive unrestrained domestic surveillance using the tools of foreign intelligence surveillance during the Cold War, to which the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was a response (a response whose partial undoing in the FISA Amendments Act is one of the focal points of outrage in the recent complaints about domestic abuses justified by the "permanent war".)

Yeah, GP is still true when you limit it to domestic actions.

> Also, the phrase I used "so many actions".

If you want to support your claim with specifics, go ahead, but right now all I see is waving around generalities, and responding to the specifics raised in opposition with more generalities.

How about you just start by reading the Patriot Act.

A law passed by Congress authorizing acts of war is, ipso facto, a declaration of war (in the sense of an exercise of the Constitutional power to declare war.)

The only effect of not using specific legal phrasing is that it may not trigger other effects under other statutes Congress has passed which require particular language in subsequent law to trigger their effects. This can be important, to be sure, but it doesn't make it any less a declared war.

Open-ended declarations of war are, of course, extremely problematic and open to abuse, which is one of the reasons the last notable one (the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution) was repealed.

I guess we get to learn the lessons of the Vietnam era all over again in this generation. Maybe this time they'll stick...

"While the AUMF did not officially declare war, the legislation provided the President with more authority upon which to exercise his constitutional powers as Commander in Chief."

http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/commander_in_chief_powers

The last "officially" declared war was WWII, I believe.

And why is the declaration so vague?

So USA will have to redefine the declaration, most probably.

So it can be forever.