Lost amid the reality we must bathe ourselves in chlorine to avoid upsetting the delicate sensibilities of West Africans is the invisible policy discussion of an illegal war being carried out in Syria.

President Hopey Changey has proclaimed both The War Powers Act, and a 2002 congressional authorization (AUMF) intended against al-Qaeda in Iraq, as the baseline for his legal approach to bombing in Syria.
Apparently, we are to ignore the fact the War Powers Act expired after 30 days, and the AUMF was never granted for Syria.
Of course the actual legal route would require congressional leadership to actually do, well, you know, leadership-type things. Currently neither Senator Turtle, nor the House Crier are willing to interrupt election season -or tanning appointments- to put Syrian authorization measures in front of the peoples representatives for a vote.

Unfortunately those pesky details are not lost on Russia, who reminded Secretary Ketchup as such during a recent chat.
Only in 2014’s fundamental change world does our President put constitutional types in a position where we actually end up in agreement with our arch nemesis, Russia.
(CNSNews.com) – Russia is not a member of the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition because its military actions are “paradoxical” and not in line with international law, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said this week. He pointed out that the coalition and Russia were arming opposing sides in the Syrian civil war.
Delivering a lecture on Russia’s foreign policy, Lavrov said Russia has been sending “large-scale weapons and military hardware supplies” to the Syrian and Iraqi governments — thereby greatly improving their ability to fight “religious extremists vying for power.”
Meanwhile the U.S.-led coalition was both bombing Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL) terrorists and providing armed support “to the opposition forces fighting the Bashar Assad regime alongside the Islamic State,” he said.

“The U.S. considers this support ‘moderate’ and therefore acceptable,” Lavrov continued. “Its purpose is to help the Syrian opposition achieve the potential to overthrow the current regime in Syria. The controversial and paradoxical nature of these actions is obvious, in my view. We have been discussing this with our U.S. counterparts, trying to understand their logic, but have not received any clear explanations so far.”
Lavrov’s comments at Monday’s event in Moscow were made available by the Russian foreign ministry.
Russia, a longstanding ally of Assad, has argued for months that the regime should be a partner in the effort to defeat ISIS, but the U.S. has ruled out any cooperation with a despot whose legitimacy it does not recognize.
For America’s Sunni Arab coalition partners, toppling the regime in Damascus is an important part of the mission, and they intend that the support being given to the rebels to fight ISIS will also better equip them to bring down Assad.
Trying to moderate expectations, administration official say ISIS is the priority, and that the broader civil war needs a political, not military, solution.
“We wholeheartedly agree with the (U.N.) Secretary-General [Ban Ki-moon] that a political solution is absolutely essential to address the root causes of extremism in Syria, and to address the legitimate aspirations and grievances of its people,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday.
In his lecture, Lavrov said Russia supports coordinating with others in the fight against the common threat of terrorism, but those efforts “have to rest on a solid foundation of international law under the auspices of the U.N. Security Council.”
Bombing ISIS positions on Syrian territory without prior coordination with Damascus “does not fit with these principles.”
“[O]ur country is not part of the U.S.-led international coalition,” he said. (read more)