Sorry to chortle, but:
President Barack Obama is facing growing anger from lawmakers who believe he overstepped his authority by launching missile strikes into Libya without first seeking the consent of Congress.
Congress -- personified in 2007 and 2008 by a Democratic majority in both houses -- had its chance, perhaps its last, to curb the imperial presidency, as aggressively enlarged by and under George W. Bush. Congress should have impeached his autocratic ass -- or at least taken a stab at it -- then, for his many abuses and various high crimes and assorted misdemeanors of executive power. But Congress, for self-interested political reasons, chose not to.
By early 2008 I was writing that Barack Obama -- who after Iowa was virtually certain to ascend -- would, notwithstanding his Constitutional-lawyerly background, never surrender the presidential powers that Bush had accrued. Presidents just don't do that; never have, never will, for that's not in their self-interest. Power must be stripped from a chief executive, like the hangman ripping the epaulets from the doomed.
And now Congress cries Imperial Presidency!
Mr. Obama, a subtle and sublime student of history, must be shaking his head.
Is it any wonder that so many 20th-century presidents soon took a superior interest in foreign over domestic policy -- that they preferred dealing even with rugged opponents among 100-plus nations to the 535 Battling Bachmanns and Kuciniches of Capitol Hill?