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Wicker to boycott Cordray hearing to protest Obama 'recess' appointmentsBy Pete Kasperowicz - 01/26/12 03:45 PM ET Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) on Thursday afternoon said he would boycott a planned hearing next week in which Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Richard Cordray will testify, as a way of protesting Cordray's recess appointment to that post when the Senate was not in recess. "Let me be explicitly clear," Wicker said on the Senate floor. "Richard Cordray is not the duly constituted director of the CFPB. His purported recess appointment does not comply with the Constitution, and is in fact a...

The Department of Justice offered a defense on Thursday for President Obama’s controversial decision to make several recess appointments while Congress was in pro forma sessions. In a memo, Justice argued the pro-forma sessions held every third day in the Senate do not constitute a functioning body that can render advice and consent on the president’s nominees. It said the president acted consistently under the law by making the appointments.

GOP: Could Obama make a recess appointment overnight or on weekend?By Pete Kasperowicz - 01/06/12 03:01 PM ET Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is asking the Obama administration whether recess appointments overnight and on the weekend are possible after the president's decision this week to appoint four federal officials despite pro forma sessions by Congress. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Grassley and seven other Republican senators on Friday pressed the Obama administration for more details about its decision to make the controversial recess appointments. Grassley's letter said the White House broke with 90 years of precedent on Wednesday...

Romans 13:1 "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers, For there is not power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God."

Republican lawmaker: Obama recess appointment is attack on ConstitutionBy Pete Kasperowicz - 01/04/12 12:39 PM ET House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) on Wednesday predicted that the Obama administration's decision to recess-appoint Richard Cordray as director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) would lead to numerous legal challenges against the agency that will render it unable to function for the foreseeable future. "President Obama has delegitimized the CFPB and has opened the agency up to legitimate legal challenges that will cripple it for years," Bachus said. "The greatest threat to our economy right now is uncertainty,...

The Senate is famed for its long-winded debates, but on Friday it took Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown just seconds to stop Republicans in their tracks. With the Senate entering the first day of its Memorial Day recess, the Ohio senator was briefly in the chair, before a near-empty chamber, to gavel in and gavel out what is called a pro forma session. Without that procedural move, the Senate would technically be adjourned and President Bush could install administration officials or judges as "recess appointments" — without Senate confirmation. "That's the fastest I've ever done it," said Brown, who like other...

Most of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 11th-hour appointments came as no surprise: Friends, allies and administration workers were rewarded – sometimes well rewarded – in a ritual that has become a tradition for outgoing governors. But one appointment stood out. Former state Sen. Carole Migden, a liberal San Francisco Democrat, was named to the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board, the nation’s first state agency created to protect and regulate the collective bargaining rights of farm workers. The ALRB was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, then in his first term, legislation that was supported by the late United Farm...

Dr. Donald Berwick has his coming out party today in Washington. After President Obama snuck him into office during a recess appointment as the head of the second largest health insurance company in the world- CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) without so much as a single hearing, Senators finally have an opportunity to meet him during a Finance Committee meeting.

That whole Senate confirmation process is only there to keep the country from experiencing change it can believe in, right? Well, then let’s just skip it. You can almost hear these thoughts going through Obama’s head as you read about his appointment of Elizabeth Warren as adviser to the shaping of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Bureau will be the embodiment of Warren’s brainchild, the Consumer Finance Protection Agency, and “will be a watchdog for the American consumer” if we are to believe Obama. By appointing Warren as an advisor and not as the Bureau’s director, Obama was able...

I should start by acknowledging that repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment is hardly a mainstream issue and certainly not anything likely to come about (which is an understatement). However, the fact that there are people out there seeking its repeal is sufficient to garner comment, especially since said persons were significant enough within factions of the Tea Party movement to actually get some Senate candidates to state that they were in support of the repeal. Further, every once in a while I will get a commenter who is favor a repeal, so it seems worth some discussion.The proximate cause of...

Actress Bo Derek may be a "10," but state lawmakers Wednesday indefinitely put off a decision on whether to confirm her appointment by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to a state board. The Senate Rules Committee delayed action on the governor’s appointments of Derek, Keith Brackpool, David J. Israel and Richard A. Rosenberg to the California Horse Racing Board. If confirmed, they would all serve well into the administration of the next governor, who takes office in January.

President Barack Obama's recess appointment of Donald Berwick to lead Medicare was intended to avoid another high-profile congressional fight over healthcare reform. Instead, it’s renewed — at least temporarily — the well-worn partisan debate over the government's role in medicine. The White House, with the help of congressional Democrats, had of late begun playing up the tangible benefits of the new law in hopes of picking up votes in November's midterms. But Berwick's appointment to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services [CMS] — without any formal discussion on Capitol Hill — offers Republicans an opportunity to rehash the...

Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana), one of President Barack Obama's point men in the health care reform debate, is the first Democrat to publicly criticize the president for his recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick to oversee Medicare and Medicaid. Calling Senate confirmation of presidential appointees "an essential process prescribed by the Constitution," the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee said he was "troubled" that Mr. Obama chose to bypass the legislative branch of government.

Former President Bill Clinton urged President Barack Obama to consider appointing someone to the Supreme Court who comes from political life, but said both he and his wife, the secretary of state, were too old for the job. Several senators have also urged the White House to look at candidates outside the judiciary to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. Political figures used to be well represented on the high court, but all nine justices serving now came from the federal appeals bench. Nominees from such a background are seen as easier to confirm and as more predictable once they...

Frustrated with such pesky nuisances as the Constitution, Obama now says he intends to circumvent the entire Senate confirmation process to railroad through 177 radical left-wing nominees--many of whom are opposed by both parties--while Congress is still in recess...

There is much excitement over President Obama's appointment of a transgender woman, Amanda Simpson, as Senior Technical Advisor to the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security. Simpson was previously a deputy director at Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson and a Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives from Arizona. She also has degrees in physics, engineering and business administration, and is a licensed flight instructor. Simpson portrays herself as "one of the first transgender presidential appointees to the federal government," though we don't know of any others. (Alan Colmes says she's "Likely The First Presidential Transgendered Appointee.") Tranifesto's Matt...

Georgia Rep. John Lewis, one of Washington's most prominent Democrats, called the White House earlier this year to try to block the appointment of a federal prosecutor who won convictions against more than a dozen public officials in Atlanta -- including former Mayor Bill Campbell, a longtime friend and ally of Mr. Lewis. After queries from The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Lewis' contacted White House Counsel Greg Craig late last month to withdraw his objections to the nomination of the prosecutor, Sally Q. Yates, for U.S. Attorney in Atlanta. Two government officials with knowledge of the matter described the calls....

How can it be appropriate to change the legal mechanism for filling a vacancy after that vacancy has occurred?

As speculation swirls about which politicians will vie for the first open Massachusetts Senate seat in 25 years, the process of determining a successor for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy will hinge on the actions of the state Legislature. Current law provides for a special election to fill an open seat five months after a vacancy, a provision enacted by Democrats in 2004 during the presidential election, when Sen. John Kerry was running for president. The law would have prevented then-Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, from appointing a successor to the seat. Just days before his death, Kennedy sent a...

IN 2004, FEARING that Republican Gov. Mitt Romney would appoint a fellow Republican to replace Sen. John F. Kerry should he become president, the Democratic-controlled Massachusetts legislature changed the law, mandating a special election. Now, fearing that the push for health-care reform could be weakened by the absence of a 60th Democratic senator, that same legislature wants to change the law again, allowing the governor -- now a Democrat -- to make a quick appointment. With all due respect to the wishes of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, this isn't how lawmaking is supposed to work. It smacks of political expediency...