This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, March 22, 2011.

I'm Caleb Brown.

There are plenty of sources of authority cited by President Obama as he pursues bombing strikes in Libya.

Unfortunately, the only source of approval he doesn't cite is the one he actually needs,

the explicit approval of the U.S. Congress. Cato Institute Vice President Jean Healy comments.

Well, a couple of days and about a hundred or so

tomahawk missiles into this war, the president just got around the other day to finally

notifying Congress and he sent them a letter which ends with the same boilerplate

authorities that you've seen cited by presidents in the past that he's

ordered this operation in accordance with his constitutional authority

does he cite?

He ends the letter with the boilerplate phraseology that you see from a lot of presidents in the past is

constitutional authority to conduct US foreign relations and his powers as

commander-in-chief and the Chief Executive.

You know, in a way this is really something because after all the hope and change rhetoric,

we heard on the campaign trail, all the criticisms of the Bush administration's imperialistic approach toward executive powers.

It turns out that Barack Obama agrees with John U.

The Bush administration lawyer who's written that the president has

quote the right to start wars. But under our Constitution the president doesn't have any such right. The power to create a

war and the power to conduct a war are pretty clearly separate aren't they?

Yeah if you look at the passages, the powers that President Obama cites in that letter,

I mean take the Commander-in-Chief Clause, even Hamilton, who was an advocate of broad executive authority, admitted in Federalist

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