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Welcome to the award-winning Best of the Left Podcast with clips today from the Progressive, The Bugle, Counter-Spin, The Young Turks, This American Life, The Colbert Report,

Moomia Abu Jamal, and The Onion Radio News with a bonus video clip for our Apple iOS and Android app users from The Daily Show.

You might have thought, with the death of Ben Laden, that the enormous authority Congress granted to the presidency back in 2001 would get curtailed now.

But no, Republicans in the House actually want to expand that authority. House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKin has introduced legislation that whites out the references

to September 11th that were in the original authorization of the use of military force, and then he stretches the list of now permissible targets.

It mentions armed conflict with Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces, a term that's never defined, and in the most sweeping language conceivable at grants to the President, the authority to target all entities that continue to pose a threat to the U.S. and its citizens both domestically and abroad.

Where are the Tea Party folks who say they care so much about unfettered presidential power? Because this is a blank check, if ever there was one.

33 Progressive Democrats sent a letter on Tuesday to McKean, objecting to this abdication of Congressional authority.

Mugged assiners were John Conier's Pete DeFazio, Keith Ellison, Roel Grialva, Jesse Jackson Jr., Dennis Kucinich, Sheila Jackson Lee, John Lewis, Jan Shakowski, Maxine Waters, Lynn Wolsey, and not least of all Barbara Lee.

She was the only member of Congress to vote against the original authorization of force. At least now, she's in good company.

I'm Matt Rothschild, and that's how I see it.

Friends love together. Friends make crafts together. Friends help you when you're in danger. Friends are people who are not strangers. Friends of your share of the two new places. Tell you if you've got food on your face. Friends are the ones on whom you could depend.

Friends are the ones who were there in the end. These are my friends.

Top story this week. Freedom. We won't let you down. Freedom. Though actually we might let you down. Freedom. In fact, we are definitely going to let you down. Let you down.

Middle East uprising update now.

I don't know that song. George Michael. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. It's a George Michael classic.

When you say you don't know a song like that, you lose musical credibility, Andy. Not everything is Bon Jovi and Boni M.

I'm flattered by the suggestion that I had musical credibility before that.

If it helps, it was Robbie Williams' debut solo single as well, Andy.

I was it. Yeah. Right.

Now Chris has lost musical credibility by going the other side of knowledge.

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