National Emergency?

[Vincent Penquerc'h]

>    Funny, I've never heard or read anything about them doing this.

An interesting bit in http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/50/1541.html
is that the US president can perform an "introduction of United States
Armed Forces into hostilities" without Congress declaring war, if a
national emergency is in effect. So the war in Iraq would seem to be
essentially legal from a POV of US law. I previously thought that only
Congress could do this. National emergency is a very interesting bit
of the code to have if you have either a friendly majority in both
houses, or if opposing you would be seen as political suicide, as was
the case in late 2001... I wonder if the powers conferred include
anything like law enacting with Congress bypass (for speed, you know,
we don't want Congress delaying this very important new bit of anti
terrorist press quashing law...)

-- 
Vincent Penquerc'h