For a schematic of the doubletalk the Democrats are using these days it’s hard to top the Times’ editorial this morning in respect of the war. It speaks of Congress’s “duty” to pass a new authorization on military force. It complains the Republicans in the Senate have “no trouble inserting themselves into the Iran nuclear negotiations,” a reference to Senator Cotton’s letter. “Yet,” the Times says, “they have shown little interest in carrying out a job that is squarely within their constitutional mandate — drafting an authorization for war against ISIS that Democrats can support and President Obama will sign.”

Notice the sly shifting of the burden. At the start of the sentence, the war declaration job is “clearly” within the “constitutional mandate” of Congress. The next minute the job is defined as drafting an authorization “that the Democrats can support” and the President will sign. Wait, where does the Constitution say that the majority in Congress has to draft its war declarations in a way that the minority in Congress can support? We ran the text of the Constitution through the Sun’s high-speed Sylla-Spin brand electric word separator; it turns out the word “mandate” fails to appear in the Constitution even once.

What Congress is granted is powers. It has the power to “declare war,” for sure. But nowhere does the Constitution say Congress has the “duty” to declare war — or anything else (its three uses of the word “duty” are in the fiscal sense of “tax or duty”). If, after all, Congress has the duty to declare war, wouldn’t it also have the duty to grant letters of marque and reprisal, which is the second of the great war powers. The two powers are right next to one another. Congress shall have the power to “declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures.” Why one be a duty and not the other?

That, though, is just the start of the problem. It turns out that, on the authority of no less a figure than the President Obama himself, a claim acknowledged in the Times’ editorial, authority to fight the war against the Islamic State is already in place (and has been since 2001 and 2002). Our military has been using that power against the Islamic State for months. It turns out that the bill that is allegedly designed to authorize war against the Islamic State is in fact designed to limit war against the Islamic State. George Orwell couldn’t make this stuff up. Kafka couldn’t do it either.

So no wonder the Republicans aren’t exercising their “duty” to vote for the administration’s resolution to limit the war against the Islamic State. The Islamic state hasn’t limited its own war declaration. It openly declares its intent to take its fight beyond the theaters to which we want to limit it and even to take it to our own shores. This is unremarked upon in the Times editorial on war “duty.” It’s not until the end of editorial that the paper quotes the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Corker, as noting that he is unaware of a single Democrat who supports the President’s bill.

And whose fault is that? According to the Times, it’s the Republicans’ fault — that is, Mr. Corker’s. The mind reels. It happens that we incline toward a declaration against the Islamic State without limitations in time or geography. Our estimate is that ISIS is going to attempt to breach our shores, just the way Al-Qaeda did. If that happens, aye, then there will be a duty under the Constitution, that is, a point where the Constitution doesn’t simply grant a power but requires an act. That’s in Article 4, Section 4: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion.” That’s where the shilly-shallying is constitutionally required to end and the shallying is required to start.