Call Him Our 'Imperial' President

President Obama's speech yesterday justifying military action against Libya was "disturbingly empty," writes Andrew Sullivan at his Daily Dish blog in the Atlantic. Notice he didn't try to explain why we're moving against Tripoli but not allies Bahrain or Yemen? That's "because, one suspects, there is no rational reconciliation to be made." Moammar Gadhafi's massacres are awful, but this military intervention makes no sense except on an "emotional" level, and that's not good enough.

Sullivan sees it as a "presidential power-grab," another bad example of the US trying to play global cop despite all the lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan, and he thinks Congress should weigh in. "A congressional vote is also important to rein in the imperial presidency that Obama has now taken to a greater height than even Bush. No plane should lift off, no bomb released, until the Congress has voted." Full column here. (More President Obama stories.)