I want to follow up on what I wrote last week on Obama's "recess appointments" by linking to this excellent opinion article in The Wall Street Journal by Michael McConnell, the director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. McConnell ably explains why Obama's unconstitutional appointments matter and refutes claims made by Obama's defenders.
I highly recommend that you read the entire article, as I cannot summarize everything from it here. However, I wanted to highlight one portion of the article in which McConnell notes that Obama's latest appointments merely continue the pattern of callous disregard for the Constitution that has marked his entire presidency. Obama decided to go to war in Libya not only without a congressional declaration of war, but also without following the reporting requirements of the War Powers Resolution that included a 60-day deadline for congressional authorization. His administration is attempting to bypass Congress entirely by imposing cap-and-trade regulations and union card check legislation, despite the fact that the people's representatives in Congress have rejected both.
Obama believes that he is above the law. He believes he has the right to appoint whomever he wants to whatever position he wants without congressional approval, the right to make sweeping new laws apart from Congress, and the right to unilaterally take our country to war with no accountability to Congress whatsoever. If he gets away with this behavior, he will be emboldened to be even more brazen. Democrats don't care; they support Obama's actions. Republicans control only one branch of Congress and so can do little to stop Obama -- and they are not doing a very good job using the power and public platform they do have. The media is far too busy asking the Republican presidential candidates about their views on contraception to bother to keep Obama accountable. It is difficult and time-consuming to challenge many of these things in court.
2012 is a critical year for those of us who value our constitutional system. We have a chance to defeat Obama, and we'd better not screw it up. I read comments on several conservative websites, and it worries me how divided conservatives are and how determined they seem to be to cannibalize each other. We may disagree on which of the GOP candidates is the best, but we should all agree that any of them, with all their imperfections, would be infinitely better than Obama. Romney, Santorum, Perry, Gingrich, Huntsman -- any of them. (Ron Paul is a bit of a special case, and his views are so dramatically out of the mainstream of the Republican party that I could understand some Republicans being unwilling to support him. But he is a niche candidate who has no chance of winning the nomination.) I keep reading comments from supposed conservatives saying they would "never" vote for ___ [insert name of Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, etc]. If conservatives continue with that attitude, they will swing this election to Obama. As conservatives, we should have one political goal this year, and everything we do should further that goal. Obama's defeat is the only thing that will make achieving our other goals possible, including repealing ObamaCare.
Showing posts with label recess appointments. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recess appointments. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Obama's Latest Mockery of the Constitution
This week, Obama appointed Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That's not the problem.
The problem is that this appointment is supposedly a "recess appointment." Recess appointments are a loophole that enables the president to avoid the constitutional requirement for top governmental and judicial appointees to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Recess appointments are only constitutionally permissible if Congress is in "recess." Congress is not in "recess" this week, according to the criteria set forth by Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution and its explanation in past Justice Department briefs. Congress is legally in session, and therefore Obama is not eligible to make recess appointments. But he did it anyway.
This is an open mockery of our Constitution -- and an unprecedented one. Back in 2007, Congress stayed in session for over a year to keep President Bush from making recess appointments. At one point, Congress was called into session for just 27 seconds to prevent such recess appointments. Because President Bush respected the Constitution and the rule of law, he did not make an illegal recess appointment. Now we have a president who doesn't care.
There's a reason the Constitution set up these checks and balances regarding presidential appointments. We live in a constitutional republic with division of powers between three branches of government. The whole point of the "advice and consent" Senate role is to keep the President accountable and ensure that his appointments are broadly acceptable to the public. If the President has the right to ignore such constitutional requirements altogether, he is setting himself above the law.
Obama's new appointee, Richard Cordray, will have tremendous power to influence the economy. The new Financial Consumer Protection Bureau can regulate any and every consumer transaction in this country. Because it is funded out of the Federal Reserve, it has no accountability to Congress. And now all power in this bureau is vested in one individual rather than in a five-member board (which was the original intent when this bureau was set up). Congress was trying to avoid this situation, where one unaccountable bureaucrat was running a powerful unaccountable agency, so it deliberately stayed in session to try to force reforms. Little did they know that Obama would trample on Constitutional and historical precedent to get his way.
People need to know what Obama is doing. The press is not reporting this accurately. CNN's headline is "Obama Recess Appoints Consumer Bureau Chief." You have to read deep into the lengthy article to even find out that Congress is not in recess, so therefore this cannot be a recess appointment. This illegal appointment by Obama continues his past history of avoiding Senate advice and consent by appointing an unprecedented number of powerful, unaccountable czars.
We need a President who respects the Constitution. Right now, we don't have one.
The problem is that this appointment is supposedly a "recess appointment." Recess appointments are a loophole that enables the president to avoid the constitutional requirement for top governmental and judicial appointees to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Recess appointments are only constitutionally permissible if Congress is in "recess." Congress is not in "recess" this week, according to the criteria set forth by Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution and its explanation in past Justice Department briefs. Congress is legally in session, and therefore Obama is not eligible to make recess appointments. But he did it anyway.
This is an open mockery of our Constitution -- and an unprecedented one. Back in 2007, Congress stayed in session for over a year to keep President Bush from making recess appointments. At one point, Congress was called into session for just 27 seconds to prevent such recess appointments. Because President Bush respected the Constitution and the rule of law, he did not make an illegal recess appointment. Now we have a president who doesn't care.
There's a reason the Constitution set up these checks and balances regarding presidential appointments. We live in a constitutional republic with division of powers between three branches of government. The whole point of the "advice and consent" Senate role is to keep the President accountable and ensure that his appointments are broadly acceptable to the public. If the President has the right to ignore such constitutional requirements altogether, he is setting himself above the law.
Obama's new appointee, Richard Cordray, will have tremendous power to influence the economy. The new Financial Consumer Protection Bureau can regulate any and every consumer transaction in this country. Because it is funded out of the Federal Reserve, it has no accountability to Congress. And now all power in this bureau is vested in one individual rather than in a five-member board (which was the original intent when this bureau was set up). Congress was trying to avoid this situation, where one unaccountable bureaucrat was running a powerful unaccountable agency, so it deliberately stayed in session to try to force reforms. Little did they know that Obama would trample on Constitutional and historical precedent to get his way.
People need to know what Obama is doing. The press is not reporting this accurately. CNN's headline is "Obama Recess Appoints Consumer Bureau Chief." You have to read deep into the lengthy article to even find out that Congress is not in recess, so therefore this cannot be a recess appointment. This illegal appointment by Obama continues his past history of avoiding Senate advice and consent by appointing an unprecedented number of powerful, unaccountable czars.
We need a President who respects the Constitution. Right now, we don't have one.
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