President Obama has asked Congress to provide him with the authority to consolidate multiple federal agencies, the next step on a plan announced earlier in the year to reconstitute the Commerce Department and several other agencies as a trade and economic competitiveness department.

The media has begun to recognize that the United States is routinely engaged these days in covert wars involving extrajudicial assassinations in foreign countries. Well, they’re not quite putting it that way. But this story about the huge explosion at an Iranian missile base doesn’t require much reading between the lines.

The upshot of this is that regulatory policymaking has become centralized in the White House. Obama has appointed some decent regulators at the various agencies, but all of their work gets funneled through Cass Sunstein. The regulators are just trying to make do with too-small budgets to fulfill their responsibilities. They also have to constantly look over their shoulders to see how Cass Sunstein is kneecapping their recommendations. And the real-world effects of all this are huge.

The Education Department plans to grant waivers for the No Child Left Behind law to states and school districts that “embrace reform.” This bypasses Congressional reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind law, and allows states and districts to get out from under the onerous burdens of the law, which has a deadline for 100% proficiency in reading and math by 2013-14, and which would close down schools that did not comply.

The bombshell dropped alongside the debt limit deal yesterday, aside from Gabrielle Giffords’ return to Congress, was Joe Biden telling a group of House Democrats that the President was prepared to “invoke the 14th Amendment” in the event of the debt limit failing to pass. I’m not sure entirely what he means by that, but there are enormous implications.

Dennis Kucinich’s War Powers Act vote to end US involvement in the war in Libya, known as House Concurrent Resolution 51, will get a vote in the House tomorrow.

Three provisions of the PATRIOT Act set to expire were extended yesterday as Senate leaders effectively shut off debate and worked to block attempts to amend the Patriot Act to include privacy protections. The reauthorized provisions went to the House for approval and, after passing through Congress, the legislation was flown to US President Barack Obama in France so he could sign the reauthorization.

Today marks the 60th day of US operations in Libya. Under the War Powers resolution, this should trigger a Congressional authorization for the war. The idea that the President could unilaterally attack in Libya, a country that did not threaten the United States, is dubious in its own right. But the War Powers resolution is pretty clear that after the 60-day period, the executive must come to Congress.

Republicans are getting worried that corporations might have to admit that they give money to Republicans. Much like the Chamber of Commerce is worried that corporations might have to admit that they give money to the Chamber of Commerce. They are all just very ashamed of themselves, I guess. So they’re trying to stop the Obama Administration from delivering an executive order that would force government contractors to disclose their political donations.

So, like all good conservatives looking for a legal patina for their theories, they’ve turned to John Yoo.

The President signed the 2011 appropriations bill yesterday, and he attached a signing statement to it. There were two bones of contention. The first was the measure banning funds to transfer prisoners from Guantanamo. The second, the bill defunded the offices of Presidential advisors, or “czars,” four all ready vacant or defunct.