Recess Appointments
Posted on 04/01/2002 10:07:48 AM PST by Mom_Grandmother
Saturday, March 30, 2002
Bush Announces Five Recess Appointments
Washington Times: by Stephen Dinan and Amy Fagan
President Bush announced five recess appointments yesterday, including adding his campaign lawyeer to the Federal Election Commission and naming a black conservative assistant secretary of education for civil rights.
The president appointed Michael E. Toner to the FEC, where he will implement the new campaign-finance regulations Congress passed last week. Mr. Toner is chief counsel to the Republican National Committee and was general counsel to Bush-Cheney 2000. Gerald Reynolds, a legal analyst at the Center for Equal Opportunity and president to the Center for New Black Ledadership, was appointed assistant secretary of education for civil rights.
The president avoided the Senate confirmation process by making the appointments whild Congress is on a two-week break for Easter and Passover. A recess appointee can serve through the end of the calender year but must be confirmed by the Senate to hold the slot after that. Democrats criticized Mr. Bush for circumventing the nomination process.
"This is one more example of the administrations lack of commitment to the enforcement of our nation's civil rights laws." said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massauchusetts Democrate, who as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has jurisdiction over Mr. Reynold's nomination. "Gerald Reynold's confirmation hearing lay serious doubts about his qualifications for this important post that effects the civil rights of millions of Americans."
In addition to Mr. Toner and Mr. Reynolds, the president appointed Dennis L. Schornack to be commissioner and chairman of the International Joint Commission for the United States and Canado, Emil H. Frankel to be assistant secretary of transportation for transportation policy and Jeffrey Shane to be assiociate deputy secretary of transportation. Jim Manley, Mr. Kennedy's spokesman, said ther were concerns from civil rights groups over Mr. Reynold's commitment to enforcing civil rights laws, including affirmative action. He said some women's groups were concerned that he would not adequately enforce Title IX, which prohibits sex descimination in federally funded education programs, including athletics.
Mr. Bush sent Me. Reynold's nomination for the Department of Education to the Senate on Sept. 25. Mr. Kennedy held a hearing on him on Feb. 26 and was planning to bring Mr. Reynold's nomination for a vote in committee sometime in April, Mr. Manley said. But Mr. Reynold's backers said Democrats were stalling because they didn't want to see him confirmed. Roger Clegg, general counsel at the Center for Equal Opportunity, where Mr. Reynolds used to work, said Mr. Reynold's "wrote and is on record as opposing the use of racial and ethnic preferences in, for instance, college admissions, and is generaly a conservation, and of course that makes him unpopular with Senator Kennedy."
Sen. George Allen, Virginia Republican, said Mr. Bush's appointments have been uniformly qualified. He said at the pace the Senate was going in confirming federal judges, Mr. Bush had every reason to suspect slow action on these nominees and to act on his own.
"To the extent you hear any of thes Democrats yelping about process, I didn't hear the same utterances out of them when Clinton was making all these last-minute appointments as president," he said. (This article was excerpted.)
Ain't life grand when you've got the likes of Clinton to excuse your own behavior!
We should just change the process.
Goodness knows we're in a peak period of "re-organization" as it is. Why not go whole hog?
Now appoint Pickering.:)
As for your comments. They appeared to be garbled in transmission. However, don't bother to re-post.
Just looks bad. Why not do away with Congressional approval entirely?
First...the statement was not to justify but to point out the stupididty of dimowit complaints. Secondly, no one is wanting to do away with congressional approval...but it might be nice if they at least acted on the nominations. None of these people were rejected....they hadn't even been voted on yet. Big difference with the Clinton appointment of Lee.
Recess Appointments
But, as you say, that just means somebody else -- ideally younger, and ideally more right-wing (to make the Senate Dems pay a price for their obstructionism) -- should be given a recess appointment. In fact, I think it's time for many judicial recess appointments.
Clinton did it. Why can't Bush? As somebody on this thread has already said, it is perfectly constitutional.
It's worked with declaring war. What's a piddly appointment compared to that?
If you want more proof of how negligible are the representatives of "the people's will", you can always look to the words of presidential appointment Tom Ridge:
"We may make some recommendations about the integration or consolidation of some of these departments that will certainly need congressional approval," Ridge said.The ex-Marine and former Pennsylvania governor predicted, however, that he would not seek legal authority for his own office because the president's personal support is enough for Ridge to do his job coordinating homeland security operations.
"I've got all the authority I need," Ridge said. "I've gotten $38 billion in (budget) authority in four months," Ridge said, referring to funds in Bush's budget proposal. "That is not so bad."
Ridge: Gov't Might Need Reorganizing
So he would "certainly" need congressional approval of the landscaping done by the outfit confected from whole cloth and contracted with or without Congressional approval?
What's wrong with this picture?
BS Bush is filling vacancies that the Senate wishes to 'politicize'. Good to know that bipartisanship STILL means 'leaning left' to Senator Kennedy.
Come now, Republicans howled bloody murder over Clinton's recess appointments, and you expect Dems not to do the same for Bush? The criticisms are valid on both sides of the aisle, but the right of the President (whatever party he may represent) to make recess appointments is not seriously in question. The howling is just part of the political game, and the recess appointment "loophole" is part of the web of checks and balances envisioned by the constitution.
Hopefully, the Senate will not be in democRAT hands at the end of the calendar year.
Your post does seem to be woven from pure B.S. however:)
Don't know why I didn't go with CUT from whole cloth.
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