Senator Orrin Hatch, Utah Republican, said in 1997 about the possibility of a recess appointment of Bill Lann Lee, “If [Clinton makes] a recess appointment, then I have to say, it’s a finger in the eye of the Senate. I think you’d find there would be an awful lot of repercussions from that.”

To paraphrase Sister: Why in the hell would exercising your authority as President to LEGALLY appoint someone during a Congressional recess be considered a ‘finger in the eye of the Senate?’ Why would you threaten repercussions against a President for exercising his Constitutionally granted power? Oh, that’s right, I forgot that was Clinton — the Constitution wasn’t in force during his administration.

As to Captain Ed’s brilliant analysis of how it can’t be an ‘abuse of power’ since the Constitution gives the President the ‘power’: If you were not granted a given ‘power,’ it would be impossible to abuse it. So simply pointing out that the Pres. has the ‘power’ to make recess appts does not mean that any given appt is not an abuse of that power or that that power, somehow, cannot be abused. Since so many conservatives endorse ‘originalism’ as their preferred way to apply the Constitution, you’d expect cons to generally oppose any recess appt — unless it was truly an emergency appt that could not wait for Congress to reconvene. But that would require consistency from the righteous Right — something they claim but rarely exhibit.

Why is the Bolton appt an ‘abuse’ of power? Because Bush could secure an up/down vote on Bolton by providing the documentation that has been requested. Spare me the ‘moving the goalposts’ nonsense. The facts are that the Ds did NOT increase their demands vis a vis Bolton, in fact, they moderated their demands — trying to make it easier for the WH to comply. Bush, rather than working with the Senate, decided to abuse his power to make recess appts and force Bolton through — even in the face of bipartisan opposition to a very questionable nominee. I think the reason Bush did not release the docs and go for an up/down vote on Bolton, is that it is likely that it would have been a ‘down’ vote.

Wayne: He certainly isn’t someone to take seriously on any issue,that’s for sure. The media just gives him a lot of face time because they agree with him.

The only decent use I could ever think of for this scumbag was if he’d had the decency to take a couple of bullets for his brothers!!

President George Bush today bypassed the Senate and used a recess appointment to send embattled UN Ambassador nominee to the UN, …

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If you are reading this blog (or any political blog for that matter) it isn’t news to find out that President Bush used his Constitutional powers to appo…