NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Unconstitutional war against ISIS expands to include ground combat by US forces.

This expansion of the US role further underscores the reality that we are waging a real war against ISIS, one that, under the Constitution, requires congressional authorization. It is no longer possible (if, indeed, it ever was) to describe this as just a few small-scale air strikes. Yet, even after more than a year of combat operations, no such authorization is in sight.

The Obama administration has offered a variety of legal rationales for its policy, including claims that it falls within the president’s inherent executive authority, or that it is authorized by the 2001 Authorization for Use Military Force against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, or the 2002 Iraq AUMF. But each of these theories has serious flaws. Other, perhaps even more questionable, rationales of the administration’s action have been put forward by controversial Berkeley law professor and former Bush administration official John Yoo. I criticized Yoo’s here, though I do give him credit for consistency in defending Obama using the same logic that he endorsed during the Bush administration. Yoo, in fact, epitomizes the kinds of broad Bush-era theories of presidential power that then-Senator Obama denounced when he first ran for president in 2008.

Yes, Obama’s the hypocrite here. But that’s hardly a surprise, given the many 2008 Obama statements that have passed their expiration date.