Obama Violates Constitution

Politics • January 2013 • Views: 1,652

By using recess appointments President Obama got around the Senate and appointed three people to the National Labor Relations Board. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit says that the President violated the Constitution when he did that. From the article: “…GOP lawmakers gaveled in for a few minutes every three days just to prevent Obama from making recess appointments. The White House argued that the pro forma sessions — some lasting less than a minute — were a sham.” Read the article: news.yahoo.com

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7 comments

Randall Gross Sat, Jan 26, 2013 6:07:31am

bad link, but here’s the story at NYT, this will be appealed, & the last ruling went for Obama. It’s unlikely that a higher court will allow the revocation of recess appointments entirely.

[Link: www.nytimes.com…]

NPR take:
[Link: www.npr.org…]

PhillyPretzel Sat, Jan 26, 2013 6:11:05am

re: #1 Randall Gross

Thank you for another link. Sometimes those yahoo links are not too good.

Dark_Falcon Sat, Jan 26, 2013 6:19:33am

re: #1 Randall Gross

bad link, but here’s the story at NYT, this will be appealed, & the last ruling went for Obama. It’s unlikely that a higher court will allow the revocation of recess appointments entirely.

[Link: www.nytimes.com…]

NPR take:
[Link: www.npr.org…]

Not entirely, but in the case of the NLRB appointees SCOTUS is likely to uphold this ruling, since the Senate was in pro-forma session at the time. A recess appointment requires the Senate to actually be in recess, which it wasn’t:

Article I, Section 5, of the Constitution states that neither house of Congress may adjourn for more than three days without the consent of the other house. The House of Representatives did not consent to a Senate recess of more than three days at the end of last year, and so the Senate, consistent with the requirements of the Constitution, must have some sort of session every few days.

The president and anyone else may object that the Senate is conducting “pro forma” sessions, but that does not render them constitutionally meaningless, as some have argued. In fact, the Senate did pass a bill during a supposedly “pro forma” session on Dec. 23, a matter the White House took notice of since the president signed the bill into law. The president cannot pick and choose when he deems a Senate session to be “real.”

It does not matter one whit that most members of Congress are out of town and allow business to be conducted by their agents under unanimous consent procedures, because ending a session of Congress requires the passage of a formal resolution, which never occurred and could not have occurred without the consent of the House.

I’m quite sure that this rulings effect will stand up to Supreme Court review and that the NLRB’s work in 2012 is basically going to have to be discarded.

Randall Gross Sat, Jan 26, 2013 6:23:18am

Here’s Digby’s take,
[Link: digbysblog.blogspot.com…]

This coupled with the wimpy Filibuster reform is a terrible disaster for the Dems if it stands the next four years.

Randall Gross Sat, Jan 26, 2013 6:25:02am

re: #3 Dark_Falcon

You know I”m not a constitutional lawyer, and neither are you so I wouldn’t bet on it either way DF.

Randall Gross Sat, Jan 26, 2013 6:28:37am

To me what’s neither constitutional nor effective government is giving the minority party effective veto power over every Executive branch appointment. That’s just plain f’ing wrong, and the GOP knows it.

kirkspencer Sat, Jan 26, 2013 6:44:23am

Here is the actual decision.

Dark, you might want to read it. Because the reason it says the NLRB appointment was out of recess has nothing to do with pro forma sessions.

The court says the only recess in which appointments can be made is the one between sessions of congress. holidays, etc., do not matter.

There are practical problems with that. For example there are all the federal judges who have been appointed over the past decades during other recesses. That is a lot of cases to be re-tried.

Personally, I think the argument is put together well but ignores the fact prior courts have taken such appointments as valid. We shall have to wait and see, of course.

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