Opinion (Noah Feldman): Who has the war powers?

For weeks, Congress has immersed itself in drafting a nonbinding Congressional resolution condemning the president’s plan to secure Baghdad by sending 21,500 additional troops to Iraq. Although Democrats and some Republicans have chosen the expedient route of impugning the surge without actually blocking it, some heavy hitters have hinted that Congress could use the power of the purse to force the president to follow its will. Senator Ted Kennedy has introduced legislation that would block the president from adding more troops without specific Congressional authorization.

The president, as usual, is having none of it. In an interview with “60 Minutes,” he asserted that Congress had no authority to interfere with his troop deployments. If President Bush sticks to his guns, the question of how far Congress can go to control his war plans is not going to go away. A constitutional conflict is brewing.

Read the rest at the NY Times