Under a “formalist” view, the Senate is in session whenever it says it is in session – even if the chamber is empty most of the time and all the senators are in their home states. If that view is correct, then Mr. Obama’s appointments on Wednesday were constitutionally invalid.And from the White House's own blog, their explanation:
Under a “functional” view, the Senate is in recess if its members are unavailable to perform the tasks the Constitution assigns to them – like deciding whether to consent to the appointment of a presidential nominee.
The administration’s legal team has adopted the second view – thereby freeing Mr. Obama to make the recess appointments. But several legal questions were raised by the move.
Here are the facts: The Constitution gives the President the authority to make temporary recess appointments to fill vacant positions when the Senate is in recess, a power all recent Presidents have exercised. The Senate has effectively been in recess for weeks, and is expected to remain in recess for weeks. In an overt attempt to prevent the President from exercising his authority during this period, Republican Senators insisted on using a gimmick called “pro forma” sessions, which are sessions during which no Senate business is conducted and instead one or two Senators simply gavel in and out of session in a matter of seconds. But gimmicks do not override the President’s constitutional authority to make appointments to keep the government running. Legal experts agree. In fact, the lawyers who advised President Bush on recess appointments wrote that the Senate cannot use sham “pro forma” sessions to prevent the President from exercising a constitutional power.The Atlantic weighs in. Fox News mentions that the US Chamber of Commerce may sue, as they are against the CFPB in its entirety. This essentially signals an end of pro forma sessions meant explicitly to block the President's Constitutional right to appoint individuals during a recess, if it's upheld.
ITT:Seriously? there are only two comments before yours, both of them jokes. Secondly it's entirely possible to both run roughshod over the constitution while at the same time being too timid against the republicans. The KSM trial is a perfict example. Obama denied someone a trial because republicans complained, thus being both timid and ignoring the constitution.
People who normally complain about Obama being too timid, now complain about obama running roughshod over the constitution.
People who have been complaining about Obama running roughshod over the constitution now praising Obama for growing a spine.
The US Chamber of Commerce is a dinosaur, and there are very strong indications that it may be corrupt..The U.S Chamber of commerice is a (privately owned) lobbying shop. Calling them 'corrupt' would be like calling a porn star a slut. Corruption is their job.
but wait for non-bank financial companies, like payday loan companies who will be conceivably hurt by the appointment, to bring suit against the government. These non-bank financial companies are currently not federally regulated, but will be under the jurisdiction of the Consumer Finance Protection Agency now that it has a director.Yeah, but sue them for what? Obama is implementing a law that congress passed, which the repubicans are trying to prevent the implementation of by abusing senate rules that aren't even in the constitution.
[T]here are, in fact, swing voters, but that they are far fewer than they're made out to be. The defining work on this subject is Bruce Keith et. al.'s "The Myth of the Independent Voter," published in 1992, which broke down independent voters into three categories: independents who lean Democratic, independents who lean Republican, and pure independents. The "leaners" voted for Republican and Democratic candidates with about the same frequency that self-identified Republicans and Democrats did. Only pure independents were unpredictable, and amounted to just under 10 percent of the electorate. These were the true swing voters, but there were not that many of them.posted by zombieflanders at 7:59 PM on January 5 [1 favorite]
The book's findings have held up since its publication. In the 2008 election, "pure independents" made up only 7 percent of the electorate, and leaners still voted overwhelmingly for the candidates of the party they identified as leaning toward. This behavior holds up even between elections, in things like presidential approval polls. George Washington University's John Sides analyzed ABC/Washington Post presidential approval polls from 2009 and broke them down based on whether respondents were pure independents, leaners or partisans
Turn out for Martha Coakley in 2009, or convince moderates to do so. This alone would probably have delivered a noticeably more liberal health care law.Martha Coakley was an absolutly wretched candidate, and now it's likely the seat will go to Elizabeth Warren. Which is by far a superior outcome. Let's not forget this woman was the AG of Massachusetts while they were prosecuting people for filming the police. She was also involved with keeping innocent people in jail
Turn out for Democrats in 2010, or convince moderates to do so.
When Martha Coakley became district attorney of Middlesex County in 1999, the Amiraults were still in the news. But by this time hardly anyone believed they were guilty of the horrendous crimes they were alleged to have committed. In fact there was no evidence that anyone had abused any children in the Fells Acres Day Care.Had I been in MA, there is no way I would have voted for her. I would probably have voted for Scott Brown on the general principle that keeping innocent people in jail isn't something that should be rewarded with a senate seat.
But what did Martha Coakley do when the Parole Board voted unanimously (5-0) to pardon Gerald Amirault? She did everything in her power to see that he stayed in prison, including sending an assistant DA to oppose his release at the hearing. Coakley also went on talk shows to spout her views about his guilt.
Show up to vote in 2010. Not helping anyone when you don't do that.FFS: Who in this thread do you think didn't vote in 2010?
Let me post a revealing stat for you:Hahaha.
41% of Americans self-ID as Conservative, 36% ID as Moderate, 22% ID as liberal.
Without moderates and independents the hippies will never make up the difference.
True, but if Coakley had won, wouldn't Elizabeth Warren have been appointed director of the CFPB over a year ago?No, she might have gotten this recess last week instead of Richard Cordray -- Cordray replaced Warren as soon as she Obama withdrew her nomination so she could run for senate.
The fuck are you even on about? The only place where Ironmouth has pinned any blame at all was on people who didn't vote in 2010 or wouldn't vote in 2012.First of all, that's not true. He reached all the way back 12 years to bitch about Nader voters:
In other words, you guys wish that the party that is most likely to bring your agenda forward was more liberal and more strident and attacking than it is. That's fine. But voting against that party when there is no alternative that will be elected is just plain stupid.And second of all who, exactly, in this thread is voting against democrats? He certainly seems to have accused people of doing it here
And it counts, see Bush v. Gore.
Show up to vote in 2010. Not helping anyone when you don't do that.Which poster in this thread didn't vote in 2010?
Really? Pretty regularly the cry comes up that because Obama has violated some shibboleth or another, MeFite X isn't going to vote for him. This criticism, especially on MetaFilter, comes from people who consider themselves to the left of Obama, and Ironmouth's repeated point is that this is unlikely to lead to more progressive positions from Obama.Yeah it's true that you see people say "if Obama does X I won't vote for him," Lately it's signing NDAA. But what does that have to do with the 2010 congressional elections?
when, if you're being consistent, centrists are the solution to getting moderates to vote.I don't think that's actually true. The assumption is that there is only one 'dimension' that people evaluate politicians on, how 'left' or 'right' they are and that voters will vote for whoever is closest to them on that axis. I don't think there's any reason to think that's true.
Pretending that just because MeFites are engaged that it isn't something that's broadly needed is silly, because MeFites have about as much control over election turnout as they do any number of other tactics — which is to say, not very much at all.No matter who you're talking too, condescending insults are not going to inspire people to rally to your cause.
Dems lost in 2010 because of the economy, because voters hated incumbents, and because the Tea Party jolted conservative enthusiasm.Maybe if the democrats hadn't done such a shitty job with the economy when they were in charge, there wouldn't have been such a strong anti-incumbent attitude? Of course, the republicans didn't do any better when they won the house, so they'll probably get wiped out again in 2012.
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posted by mudpuppie at 2:03 PM on January 5 [13 favorites]