Bloodless Coup

Talk about silly rabbits. Recess appointments, just like "judicial activism." OK for us, not for you!

Armand,
There's hypocrisy on both sides. Several Democratic senators are in uproar about what they now call an abuse of power by Bush, but when James Hormel was given the recess appointment to be ambassador to Luxembourg, they talked about what a great day it was (Boxer), or the courage Clinton had to appoint him(Lieberman). If they had 60 senators supporting Hormel, they could have called for a vote on the Senate floor, but they didn't, so Clinton appointed him during the recess, just like Bush did for Bolton.

and if bush didn't have 50 votes, aw, hell, recess appointment. after all, this summer it's a supreme court party and everybody knows it. the UN can go screw. or rather, our relationship with it. and, just for the record, that's exactly what's going to happen. who invites to the party a guy who pissed in the corner the last couple times he came around? and who taps the guy who pissed in the corner to represent him and his friends at the same house still reeking of urine.

bush can't tout the anti-democratic nature of the use of the same filibuster that's served both sides well for far longer than anyone in government has served, and for decades and decades longer than bush had any reason to believe he'd be anything more than an ex-con with a penchant for driving businesses into the ground, and then use his recess appointment power not to appoint someone to a post that desperately needs an appointment (the contingency for which the recess appointment plainly was designed (and to be fair, luxemborg was even less urgent, but then again, clinton didn't have the strong senatorial majority bush 43 enjoys)) but simply to install his utterly incompetent and magnificently ill-suited locker room buddy to the seat that represents the united states in the only halfway effective worldwide representative body ever.

it's an embarrassment. it's also a tacit acknowledgment of the fact that in the first year of his second term bush is already a lame duck. {cough} frist backs stem cells {cough}

Morris,

Defending recess appointments (with their questionable Constitutionality) by saying that "the other side did it too" isn't a defense.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

baltar, while in principle i think we are largely on the same side here, on what basis do you suggest recess appointments are questionable as to constitutionality. aren't they expressly provided for in the constitution? i can't remember, and don't have time to look, but i thought . . .

Joshua,

The Constitution clearly says that the President can appoint people (Article 2, Section 2, Clause 3):

Clause 3: The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

That would seem pretty straight-foward, except I'd like someone to define "Vacancies" (how far down does the President get to reach?), "Recess" (anytime the Senate isn't actively meeting?), and "Session" (as it is interpreted today, this means that recess appointments serve until this Congress expires, is that when the end of the "session" is?)

If one wanted to be a tricky President, you could get completely around the "advise and consent" duty of the Senate. Imagine a Presidential election. Congress (a new one) is elected at the same time. As President, one could immediately appoint whomever one wanted just after taking the oath of office (but before Congress has officially met, thus meeting the legal requirement of an appointment when the Senate is in "Recess"). These appointments would last for two full years (when the Congress that was just elected expires). Those people you have appointed lose their jobs when the Congress expires, but as President you could re-appoint them during the time between the old Congress and the new Congress (another "Recess"). It looks legal to me.

I'd love for some originalist to wander through here and let me know how this part of the Constitution was interpreted a couple of hundred years ago.

Huh - Maybe that was something to do with why Congress convenes a couple of weeks before the president is sworn in.

i knew it was there; thanks for the citation. you raise excellent points about the porosity of the language, points to which i have no robust except response any more sophisticated than armand's, "huh!" interesting stuff. but then that's a given with pure constitutional law. at least if you're a big law dork like me.