You know, there’s a part of me that deplores that we have to do things like this.
President Obama will not be able to make recess appointments over the week-long break to commemorate Memorial Day, after Republicans forced Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to keep the chamber open for pro forma sessions every three days.
However, there’s a much larger part of me that is prone to murmur Payback’s a bitch. And What goes around, comes around. Guess that the Democrats shouldn’t have opened that particular Pandora’s Box, back in 2007…
Via AoSHQ.
Moe Lane
PS: Regarding President Obama making recess appointments anyway: yeah, sure, completely destroy that precedent. The next Republican President will thank you for it. Then again, nobody ever claimed that the Democratic party is big on long-term thinking…
Actually, they kind of excel at long term thinking. Cloward/Piven, packing the judiciary with like minded oligarchs, taking over the education system, public sector unions, establishing a near permanent stranglehold over ever greater sectors of the economy… All projects that took decades to pull off.
Now, if your saying that they suck at long term thinking that resounds to any tangible benefit to the country as a whole, yeah, they blow at that.
As to the judiciary, if they keep marching down this path, we will come to a situation where it is functionally impossible to confirm judges for life terms through the traditional process. “Advice and Consent” are not explicitly defined by the constitution, so the tradition for how judges are (majority vote on the senate floor) will go by the wayside. The question will be, what replaces that tradition? Senators merely declaring their support publicly and the President deeming the judge confirmed? The Senate finally exercising the “Constitutional/Nuclear option” to change it’s rules to eliminate judicial filibusters? Or the worst situation, the President recess appoints ALL vacancies when his party controls the Senate or appoints only those who the opposing party lets go through when his party doesn’t (thereby creating a situation where the judiciary becomes a hyper partisan entity with wild mood swings or a center left ratchet) I believe we effectively have the second of the two worst scenarios, currently.
He’s been making recess appointments for 2 years now! Why are we backslapping ourselves about being late to the party?