What Is the Point of Congress?

"Representative Seth Moulton is a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, but he learned about the U.S. military's middle-of-the-night capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro the same way many Americans did: A friend who saw the news on the internet texted him. "That is not the way Congress is supposed to be notified of operations by the Department of Defense," Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts, told us wryly."

"A Marine who served four tours of duty in Iraq, Moulton had watched for months as the military stationed warships off Venezuela's coast, and he gave little credence to the insistence of senior administration officials, in classified briefings to lawmakers, that they were not planning to take out Maduro. "I know what it means to be a Marine, sitting on a ship off the coast, and you're not there to interdict boats or conduct a naval blockade," he said."

Representative Seth Moulton learned about the U.S. military's midnight capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro via a friend's internet text. He viewed that as improper notification for Congress and expressed surprise neither at the administration's decision to attack Venezuela nor at the lack of congressional heads-up. Moulton, a Marine veteran who served four tours in Iraq, pointed to months of warship deployments off Venezuela and discounted classified briefings denying plans to remove Maduro. He asserted that the president and aides can lie to Congress with impunity because Republican leaders in Congress have shown unwillingness to act, producing a weakened legislature.

Read at The Atlantic