Well, some lawyers. Which of course, as President, he's permitted to do. And, though he disagreed with the opinion of some, he concurred with the views of others. Possibly this story is making a mountain out of a molehill, but if the New York Times had printed a similar story, except with the word Obama replaced with Bush, what would we have said?
PresidentObama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, according to officials familiar with internal administration deliberations.
The issue here is whether the wa... conflic... strategic engagement in Libya can be called hostilities. If they did, America's role would have had to have been scaled back in late May.
The headline is a little misleading, because ...
Still, it should be noted that although this story will play big in the NYT tomorrow and probably fuel the Sunday talk show hosts, the President did, in fact, agree with the opinion of other lawyers on his team:
[T]he disclosure that key figures on the administration’s legal team disagreed with Mr. Obama’s legal view could fuel restiveness in Congress, where lawmakers from both parties this week strongly criticized the White House’s contention that the president could continue the Libya campaign without their authorization because the campaign was not “hostilities.”