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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...

Frustrated by his inability to get portions of his agenda passed by Congress, President Barack Obama has forged ahead making appointments and enacting programs without the Constitutionally required consent of the legislature. The appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau attracted the most attention. The appointment of Richard Griffin, Sharon Block and Terence Flynn to be on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) garnered less attention, but appears equally unconstitutional. The President also initiated a summer youths jobs program that Congress previously rejected. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) criticized the appointments and single-handed enactment of...

President Obama’s recess appointment of three members of the National Labor Relations Board and Richard Cordray to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau continues to reverberate. The most compelling legal analysis on the subject is offered by conservative legal figures, most aptly today by Todd Gaziano of the Heritage Foundation and former attorney general Ed Meese: 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...

The appointment of former Ohio Atty. Gen. Richard Cordray did, in fact, push the edge of the constitutional envelope. But it was a rational response to an increasingly gridlocked Congress and a growing willingness among lawmakers to employ procedural tools to stop the executive branch from functioning. The legal questions raised by Cordray's appointment could ultimately upend any rules the new bureau may adopt for payday lenders and others outside the banking system. So while Obama's tactic plays well with Democrats, it may not help the people the bureau was designed to protect. Nevertheless, Republicans can't complain about Obama resorting...

If Lizzy [Elizabeth] Warden is truly opposed to Wall Street money, then shouldn’t she reject the DSCC’s money? Otherwise she is just using the DSCC to funnel in Wall Street money.

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."

Two days after defying Republicans and appointing Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, President Obama visited the new agency to take a little time to gloat. Making a victory lap of sorts at the independent agency, Obama cracked a joke, telling employees that he came by to help their new director move in. More seriously, a seemingly content Obama called the man he tapped a “great director who is tailor-made to lead this agency.” With Cordray at the helm, after months of delay, the agency will help Americans better digest mortgages, student loans and credit card fees...

Actual title is : Obama violated Senate norms to appoint this guy? New financial protection chief accused of misusing state funds (FR needs more space for title- I always have to alter Aaron's titles to post them) Sparking Republican charges he violated Senate norms, President Obama today used his recess appointment powers to name a head for the controversial Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. KleinOnline first reported last month that consumer groups had been calling on Obama to seize rarely-used powers in to make a recess appointee for Richard Cordray, the nominee for what the government bills as a new consumer...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a man whose political success is largely attributable to the aura of befuddled incompetence he uses to disarm his adversaries, was a failed Watergate baby. In 1974, a slew of often sanctimonious and very liberal Democratic politicians rode the tide of understandable national disgust with Richard Nixon to Congress. Then the lieutenant governor of Nevada, Reid ran for the U.S. Senate, hoping to tie his opponent to the "imperial presidency" that had allegedly sprung up ex nihilo under Nixon. Given Nevada's inherent conservatism (at least back then), Reid cast himself as an incorruptible champion of...

President Obama bypassed the normal Senate confirmation process on Wednesday and appointed Richard Cordray as director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. [More on Mr. Cordray and his past misconduct later on this post.] [snip] During a press briefing on Thursday, the President said the consumer protection agency would also monitor the banks to ensure that they are not issuing mortgages to borrowers who can't afford to make the monthly payments. Ironically, it was Obama and his fellow Democrats [and ACORN] who forced the banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers - who then defaulted on their loans. This,...

Mr. Obama is claiming an open-ended authority to determine that the Senate is in recess, despite that body's own judgment and the factual realities. That is an astonishing and, so far as we can tell, unprecedented power grab. It is not up to the president to decide whether the Senate is organized properly or working hard enough. However much the supposedly power-hungry President George W. Bush may have resented the Senate's practice of staying "in session" to defeat his recess-appointment power, he nevertheless respected the Senate's judgment on the point. The president has done his new appointees and the public...

President Obama’s attempt to unilaterally appoint three people to seats on the National Labor Relations Board and Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (after the Senate blocked action on his nomination) is more than an unconstitutional attempt to circumvent the Senate’s advise-and-consent role. It is a breathtaking violation of the separation of powers and the duty of comity that the executive owes to Congress. Yes, some prior recess appointments have been politically unpopular, and a few have even raised legal questions. But never before has a president purported to make a “recess” appointment when the Senate...

Defenders of President Obama’s unprecedented “recess” appointments of Richard Cordray to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three members to the National Labor Relations Board argue that the Constitution is vague on when Congress is in session and that the President can therefore take a “functionalist” approach that considers whether the Senate is available to vote on nominations. Yet even the President doesn’t buy that argument. Proof is that on December 23, President Obama signed a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut.  He said that Congress passed the bill “in the nick of time” and that it was...

Constitution: President Obama's nonrecess "recess appointments" can't be excused as over-the-top electioneering. This president has crossed over from socialistic extremism into lawlessness and, perhaps, impeachability. The U.S. Constitution established a strong presidency — so strong that even one of the most esteemed founding fathers, Patrick Henry, worried it would be kinglike. But this week saw a president exceed even those broad constitutional powers because doing so fits his election-year narrative of a "do-nothing Congress" so well. Now we have the makings of a banana republic, where the rule of clearly written constitutional law is compromised by a ruler's subjective whim....

President Obama's appointee to the Consumer protection bureau Richard Cordray is a staunch supporter of Obamacare. He has said the lawsuits against the legislation were "frivolous" because of the commerce clause.

The White House on Thursday refused to say whether lawyers at the U.S. Justice Department gave the green light to President Barack Obama's controversial appointments to two agencies but experts said the department almost certainly did provide advice. The department's Office of Legal Counsel advises the president and government agencies. In the past, it has issued guidance about the constitutionality of so-called recess appointments that are done when the Senate is away. That counsel is seen as critical to providing justification for decisions and actions by a president. It has been key on other major issues, such as the use...

In the uproar over President Obama’s unconstitutional “recess” appointments (Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three new members of the National Labor Relations Board), one fact has gotten too little attention . Attempting to justify the president’s violation of the Constitution and 90 years of legal precedent, presidential spokesman Dan Pfeiffer claimed that the president can exercise recess appointment powers because the Senate’s pro forma sessions—conducted since mid-December—are merely “a gimmick” during which “no Senate business is conducted and instead one of two Senators simply gavel in and out of session in a matter of...

Yesterday President Obama named Richard Cordray director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CPFB) with what is called a "recess appointment" -- one made while Congress is in recess. He did this because Republican senators had blocked confirmation of Cordray, also a Republican and former attorney general of Ohio. They do not object to Cordray but to how the CPFB is organized. Its financing, for example, comes from the Federal Reserve, which means Congress can't exert pressure on the agency by controlling its budget. While this type of recess appointment is a common action for presidents, this one is fuelling...

White House press secretary Jay Carney says Senate Republicans "gaveling in and gaveling out for seven seconds does not constitute a recess." Therefore, Carney argues, President Obama operated in a legal manner when he appointed Richard Cordray to head the consumer protection board. "Our assessment is that Congress has been in recess, and had made every indication that it will be in recess for a sustained period of time. And that gaveling in and gaveling out for seven seconds does not constitute a recess with regard to the President's constitutional authority," Carney said at Thursday's briefing. "Let's take the other,...