Mitch McConnell sneaked in a res­ol­u­tion – known as an au­thor­iz­a­tion for the use of mil­it­ary force – on Wednesday night when all anyone could talk about was the blizzard traveling up the East coast.

The media was taken by surprise on Thursday morning.

The purpose is to authorize the president to fight ISIS though in some ways it will limit the next president but what is noteworthy about it is the fact that it does not limit his reach in terms of geography. The fear is that it allows martial law.

From Defense One:

The AUMF put for­ward by Mc­Con­nell would not re­strict the pres­id­ent’s use of ground troops, nor have any lim­its re­lated to time or geo­graphy. Nor would it touch on the is­sue of what to do with the 2001 AUMF, which the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion has used to at­tack IS­IS des­pite that au­thor­iz­a­tion’s in­struc­tions to use force against those who planned the 9/11 ter­ror­ist at­tacks.

ISIS is in the United States but we are not at a point where we need this extreme measure. Why give this power to this maniac in the White House?

The AUMF, known as “Rule XIV,” has not been placed on the calendar which means it could come up at any time and will. It’s being fast-tracked.

The res­ol­u­tion already has four Re­pub­lic­an co­spon­sors: Sens. Lind­sey Gra­ham, Daniel Coats, Joni Ernst, and Or­rin Hatch.

Some Demo­crats were crit­ic­al of even the pres­id­ent’s own draft AUMF, warn­ing that they’d need ad­di­tion­al re­stric­tions from the ad­min­is­tra­tion on troop levels and geo­graph­ic bound­ar­ies be­fore they could sup­port any au­thor­iz­a­tion, Defense One noted.

There is deep division over this bill and there will be debate. Hopefully they will specify to not include the US.

Obama has enough power to go after ISIS but refuses to do it. His rules of engagement have been absurd.

The devil will be in the details.

Martial law has no precise meaning but it has common features – it contemplates military force; government military personnel have the authority to make and enforce civil and criminal laws; and civil liberties are suspended. Martial law was declared by Lincoln during the Civil War – Proclamation 113 – and our National Defense Authorization Act included a provision, now removed, which stripped U.S. citizens of their constitutional rights.