Joyce Appleby: Founding Fathers Could Have Predicted Libya

Joyce Appleby is a professor of history emerita at UCLA and the author of The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism.

James Madison would have smiled had he heard about President Obama's maneuver, seemingly in defiance of the War Powers Act, to avoid asking Congress to authorize military action in Libya.

The act, passed in 1973, came at a time when the Vietnam War had been underway for years without any president asking for congressional approval. Members of Congress wanted future presidents to be obliged to come to them early on in a military action.