Obama recess appointments unconstitutional

lol

The other thing I was just thinking about is if this holds up at the Supreme Court.  What's the statute of limitations on an unconstitutional appointment?  If Bush 41 nominated somebody in a "recess" that put in place a regulation that required certain safety factors on cars for example, is that now invalid?

Like I said, this could get messy.

They did, even George Washington did!  But this is a case where the Senate was playing games.  They refused to allow a vote to confirm his appointees, and then tried to technically stay in session over a long break to prevent the President from making a recess appointment.  The senate had someone show up every 3 days, call a pro forma session to order and immediately adjourn it ( so it lasted about 15 seconds ).  Nobody was actually in the Senate doing anything, no votes were taken, no Senate business was conducted, just a lone person showing up gaveling in and gaveling out.  Since a quorum is not present, the Senate cannot fulfill it's "Advice and Consent" as it is effectively in recess.

And you can be certain this will be appealed to the Supreme Court.  So we'll have to wait and see whether the Circuit ruling will stand.

I see both sides of the argument, and let's be clear that Harry Reid did something similar to Bush to prevent some recess appointments, so this isn't a case where this is something novel that the GOP came up with.

I think the much larger issue is how easy it has been to fillibuster (or to simply threaten to fillibuster) and have a single senator hold the rest of the Senate idle.  With the rules changes that were adopted to address this, hopefully it will be possible for future appointees ( of Obama and whomever succeeds him ) to get to an up or down vote.

It serves nobody's interest for federal agencies to go without anyone at the helm for such long periods.

Recess appointments are completely constitutional, you don't have to worry there.  

The issue at question here is whether the Senate was properly in recess.  The Republicans had someone show up every three days over what would have normally been the winter recess, call a pro forma session to order and immediately adjourn it for another 3 days.  And this was done specifically to block Obama from making a recess appointment, which he wanted to do because the confirmation vote on his appointments was being fillibustered in the Senate ( again, to prevent the appointment from taking place ).  If a vote had been allowed, a simple majority is needed to approve the appointment.  However, to break a fillibuster ( under the rules at the time ) a super-majority was needed, and senators didn't have to actually fillibuster, they just had to say they were going to fillibuster and it was treated the same as if they were.  So a single senator can say "I fillibuster" and hold up any vote from taking place that they want, and it would stand until a 3/5ths supermajority voted to override the fillibuster.

( edit to remove an ' that went Palin :P )

Yeah, I kind of have mixed feelings on the issue.  In theory I think the concept was to ensure people were qualified to hold a position.  Like me being elected president and nominating my wife as the AG even though she has no clue about law.  However, I don't think anyone would do that because ultimately they have to pay the political price for any failures of the people they nominate.

What it's turned into now is just a huge mess with both parties in full on block mode of any and all nominations of "the other guy" and having to resort to recess appointments to actually fill the seats, so in that context I tend to agree with you. 

I agree, it's frustrating to know that they have to look toward recess appointments because of blocking and filibuster, but....  I think the communication and bipartisanship has gotten so bad that there is no other choice.  If only we could send them to their room until they could get along.

 I do think that the nominations over the past say 12 years have become more and more politically charged, and maybe consulting the congress rather than just throwing up your buddy might help things a little.  I do know that while hard to get confirmation, the Supreme Court nominations have not been blocked this severely.  So maybe there is a reason that this blocking is occuring.

Simply stated, I think all of them are idiots intent on bending things in their own direction with little or entirely no care about how any of us lowly peasants and fools are effected by the rules and laws they exempt themselves from.  They don't care about their constituency until election year draws near, then if reelected they go back to gaming.

I think we need statesmen and not politicians!  An extreme minority of the clowns in either house care about the nation.

For the record, I do vote but it's always for the lesser of two evils, IMO.