"Commander in Chief"? Let's go to that damned piece of paper, the U.S. Constitution . . .

No, I'm not thinking of Commander in Chief the TV show, about which the most noteworthy observation to make is that the young actor who plays the First Son is powerful cute. I'm thinking of "Commander in Chief" the person who apparently can do any damned thing he pleases in the modern imperial presidency.

The subject came up on Rachel Maddow's Air America Radio show this morning, I think in her conversation with Eugene Jarecki—who's been making the rounds of at least the liberal-tolerant media flogging his film Why We Fight, which opens Friday in New York and L.A. and at some future date elsewhere, and which I have to say sounds mighty interesting. (When I contemplate shelling out the big bucks to see a movie, there has to be a darned good reason.) And I think it was Rachel herself who pointed out that the president isn't commander in chief of the country, he's commander in chief of the Army and Navy.

Specifically, Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution leads off:

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.

Of course the current occupant of the White House has made his opinion of the U.S. Constitution known. "Some damned piece of paper"—isn't that how he's supposed to have referred to it? Whereas most of us like to think of it as, you know, the supreme law of the land. Just another reason, though perhaps the overarching one, why the current occupant should be offered the immediate choice of resignation or impeachment.

He has made violating his oath of office, to protect and defend the Constitution, if not his overriding goal, then at least his invariable strategy. I say: enough already.