The Hill reports that, in vetoing an Iraq War spending bill last week, President Bush attached a signing statement to his veto which read, "This legislation is unconstitutional because it purports to direct the conduct of operations of the war in a way that infringes upon the powers vested in the presidency." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has suggested that she may take the president to court if he uses a signing statement to sidestep provisions that he thinks are unconstitutional.

I've written about Bush's signing statements before, and why they're unconstitutional (short answer: the executive has neither the authority nor the expertise to interpret the constitutionality of laws). Vice President Cheney and Karl Rove, however, feel that the executive is vested with more power than he really is. Pelosi's attempts to sue the president may fall flat, though. While signing statements that modify legislation or excuse enforcement of certain provisions of legislation are outright unconstitutional, does Congress have the authority to tell the president how to run a war?

Art. I § 8 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the sole authority to "[t]o declare war." Remember: the Constitution is not a document of omission, meaning that a branch of government has a power if and only if the Constitution explicitly grants a branch of government that power.

Art. II § 2 makes the president "commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States," meaning that he is solely in charge of the military. This means that, while Congress is solely authorized to declare war, the president is solely authorized to execute the war.

As The Hill suggests, the best course of action for Democrats may be to repeal the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force. In order to declare war, Congress must pass a piece of legislation. Anything that Congress passes, it may also repeal. The only constitutional course of action (and, contrary to what some warmongers at Fox News may think, repealing the AUMF is completely, 100% constitutional) at this point is to repeal the AUMF -- something that, of course, Bush must sign and something that, of course, he will never sign. Is the war unpopular enough in Congress that a 2/3 vote can be mustered to override a veto? Probably not. But suing the president isn't the answer. Courts can grant relief from signing statements merely by citing the fact that the president can only "sign" a bill into law or "return" the bill to the house it came from; the Constitution gives him no authority to modify a bill in any way or to enjoin enforcement of certain provisions of it before he signs it into law. But no court will ever suggest that Congress has the authority to regulate a war. What Congress does have -- and what they're using now -- is what John Marshall called "the power of the purse." One of the checks Congress has on the executive is that it may withhold funding for anything it wants, since appropriations must originate in the House of Representatives. Bush has accused the Democrats of "playing politics" with "our troops in uniform," but ignores his own hypocrisy on this matter; Bush, for example, began a war in order to "[play] politics," not to mention that he continued to employ Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense (in the name of loyalty, perhaps?) even after it was painfully clear that Rumsfeld was incompetent at managing the armed forces.

Furthermore, Bush said today that a Democratic Iraq appropriations bill consisted of "100% of money for special interest projects and 50% of money to go to our troops who wear the uniform." Ignoring the fact that Democrats are apparently amending mathematics itself in their quest for special interest funding, an analysis of the bill, H.R. 2206, reveals that the normally tried-and-true "special interests" line is completely, 100% false this time. The bill contains no earmarks for "special interests" or so-called pork-barrel spending, unless "special interests" includes salaries for U.S. attorneys, funding for nuclear nonproliferation, and a requirement that any money used under the bill must not go toward uses contrary to "laws enacted or regulations promulgated to implement the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment." Then again, we know what the administration thinks about torture (it loves torture! Except when it says it doesn't), so anti-torture requirements may qualify as a "special interest."