Let me guess, when Obama took the oath of office he had his toes crossed so the rules don’t apply to him?

(WaPo) — A State Department lawyer arrived on Capitol Hill Tuesday with two difficult tasks: Convince a Senate committee that the Obama administration didn’t need Congress’s approval for its military operations in Libya.

Then: Convince the Senate to give Obama that approval anyway.

He didn’t seem to make a lot of headway on either front.

Facing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, legal adviser Harold Koh laid out a flurry of legal arguments to justify the campaign. He did not, at least initially, seem to win over several skeptical senators on the panel.

“I think you’ve undermined the credibility of this administration. I think you’ve undermined the integrity of the War Powers act,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). “You’ve done a great disservice to our country.”

Koh told the committee that while the law says presidents must obtain congressional authorization before sending troops into hostilities overseas, what’s happening in Libya doesn’t constitute hostilities.

And what if legislators don’t agree? In that case, Koh said, they should still support the campaign, because to do otherwise would help Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi.

“We can all agree it would only serve Gaddafi’s interests” if Congress forced U.S. forces to withdraw, he said.

The hearing followed a long-running pattern in the White House’s handling of the Libyan conflict. Whenever it has tried to pacify unhappy members of Congress, the Obama administration has usually had the opposite effect.