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Subscribe to RSSThe first legal challenge to President Obama's controversial recess appointments flopped today, when a federal judge tossed it out on procedural grounds.
A business group, the National Association of Manufacturers, tried to slip the challenge into an existing lawsuit contesting decisions by the National Labor Relations Board.
It was an apt place to challenge the move, the group said, because the the president made three recess appointments to the NLRB during a Senate break.
The White House said the appointments were within a president's executive power. But many Republicans claimed they was unconstitutional, because the Senate was called briefly into session each day during the recess.
On Friday, Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the legal challenge came too late in a place where it didn't belong. The group "attempted to shoehorn a challenge" in to a pending case about an entirely different issue involving the validity of a recent NLRB rule.
"The court declines this invitation to take up a political dispute that is not before it," she wrote in a brief decision.
This won't be the last word, however. Other groups have said they will go to court to challenge the most recent appointments.
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The right wing nitwits are back to square one! lol
Talk about a great week for the President!
The misogynist freaks on the right are running around their follicles on fire over contraception in the year 2012, while the President keeps adding to his 'win' column!
Keep on... keeping on with your 'plan' GNOP, by the time all is said & done you'll be lucky if a Republican't gets elected as a dog catcher!
*popcorn*?
If Congress isn’t actually doing daily business and 97% aren’t
even in town then Congress is in recess.
What is it about Republicans and their inability to follow rules? Primary election rules---who cares, they say. Rules of court regarding standing to bring a suit----who cares, they say---we don't like these recess appointments. If they spent more time actually governing than trying to screw over Democrats and each other, we might be further along the road to recovery.
Dennis,
Only in the mind of the democrats are they in recess. The Senate and House gets to make their own rules and if I remember it was Harry Reid and the Democrats that started this daily session to prevent Bush from making recess appointments. Bush honored the congressional policy even though some told him to challenge it. Show me where it says if 97% of congress is out of town, congress is officially in recess?
This ruling did not find that the appointments were constitutional, only that it was to late to add to the case at hand. It will be challenged again in federal court, make no mistake about it. BTW, she was appointed by President Obama about two years ago.
Have a good week end Dennis.
Hi Sarge,
[Show me where it says if 97% of congress is out of town, congress is officially in recess?]
I was guessing for effect and you were being picky – you knew what I meant.
I agree it was Reid that came up with this technique. Burt if there are not enough Senators or Representatives to conduct normal business and vote, which requires a quorum then they should not be considered to be in session.
According to Article One of the United States Constitution, the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate each have a quorum of a simple majority of their respective members. If all seats are filled it will be 51 in the Senate and 218 in the House.
http://www.reference.com/browse/quorum
I also agree it is far from over but I believe the Administration will win this one.
Who gives a damn about the technicality of the rules. The REAL point here is that the GNOP are blocking Obama's appointments and disabling this country ON PURPOSE. Whether or not a few that Obama forced through is constitutional or not is nothing but a GNOP distraction... as far as I'm concerned he should have crammed all the appointments up where the GNOP doesn't shine.
yay, Judge Amy!
For the reading challenged liberals who think this is a win, here's the reason why it was tossed out:
Any judge would have made this decision because of procedure. Judge Berman isn't a hero to anyone, especially President Obama. This isn't over yet. The funny thing is if a liberal group were to attempt it, and it were shot down in the same manner, the liberals would be screaming foul!!
Thank You! Don't know how I could have gotten this one clear in my mind without your help! Much appreciated!
Good for Judge Amy Jackson! It is a good day when a sensible judge doesn't put up with the ridiculous, dishonest tactics the Senate used during their holiday recess. If the Senate RWNJ's didn't want the president to make any appointmnents they shouldn't have taken a recess.
Why are these Republicans stuck on stupid?
[Why are these Republicans stuck on stupid?]
Because they listen to microcephalics like Rush Limbaugh and those over at Fox "news"...I think the media should press Newt for more details on how he's going to get the petroleum companies to "go along" with his $2.50/gal. gasoline...I'm waiting for Fox "news" to ask him the question...
How generous of you to call Limbaugh microcephalic. And I stand corrected. Heck, all this time I thought he was anacephalic
this left and right stuff itself is stupid. democraps republicraps are all the same thing.
I'll bet that if the appointments had been made by a R pres. no matter who it was that got the appointment the Rs would be dead silent.
You mean like the democrat are dead silent over this? I guess in a way, you are correct.
Bald Eagle - It was Senator Harry Reid that came up with keeping the Senate in session to prevent President Bush from making recess appointments. Some Republicans asked Bush to disregard it and make the recess appointments. Bush chose to honor the intent of congress and did not make any recess appointments. To bad President Obama doesn't have the same respect for a separate branch of government and the constitution.
never mind
Obama and the End of American Exceptionalism
By Steve McCann
America's once-exalted position as the unquestioned leader of the free world has been greatly and deliberately eroded. A nation respected not only for its military and economic might, but more so for its dedication to the ideals of individual freedom and liberty is rudderless and adrift on a sea of uncertainty. As a result, the United States and the rest of the world are facing the most precarious and potentially dangerous period since the 1930s.
Barack Obama and his regime have accomplished much of what they set out to do -- namely, the transformation of American society and an end to the pre-eminent status of the United States. They have had a singleness of purpose and allegiance first and foremost to a confused and muddled ideology and not country.
When the leadership of a great nation exhibits this trait, the consequences can be catastrophic. The product of a lifetime of leftist indoctrination, Barack Obama has, as the basic foundation of his disorganized and uncertain belief system, a conviction that the United States has been the epitome of oppression and arrogance throughout its history.
Beyond that one tenet, Obama wavers between acceptance of crony capitalism and European-style socialism rather than rigid socialist/Marxist theory. This may be anathema to the hardcore left whence he came, but nonetheless it reflects a firm rejection of the principles of individual liberty and freedom as outlined by the nation's founders.
In short, Barack Obama is a leader without a core. Thus, he is able to rationalize the need to say or do anything as long as the end justifies the means. He therefore cannot be nor is he trusted by other leaders on the world stage, as he is devoid of character and integrity.
Coupled with his nonexistent executive experience and lack of accountability over his lifetime, he has placed the United States in a most precarious position in world affairs. In a young century that has already been beset with economic turmoil, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, unprecedented terrorist activity, and a rapidly changing world order thanks to enormous advances in communication and information, the American people could not have chosen a worse leader.
Barack Obama began his presidency by donning the hair shirt and groveling before the nations of world, begging forgiveness for what he perceived to be the sins of America's past. He did not care to understand that while allies may have mildly complained about past U.S. policy, it was out of a combination of envy and grudging respect. Yet it is America's enemies and their loud and false protestations that frame the basis of Obama's outreach and appeasement mindset. In reality, the world since the 1950s has looked to the United States for leadership and stability, not faux humility and self-flagellation.
This servile mindset by Barack Obama has projected an image of weakness which begets chaos, and chaos is what the international scene has become, be it in the Middle East, Asia, Russia, or Latin America.
In Afghanistan, by announcing a premature withdrawal date Obama has unleashed the Taliban and given them a green light to again subjugate the country. He has further exacerbated the situation by his innumerable apologies for the inadvertent burning of Korans defiled by Muslim prisoners. This has reinforced the image of not only a leader, but a nation of cowards in the minds of those who understand only strength and an indomitable will. The United States now has no option but to abandon its efforts in Afghanistan, as Obama did prematurely in Iraq, thus leaving both nations vulnerable to civil war and an Islamist takeover.
Barack Obama, determined to become the Muslim world's best friend, has instead unleashed the dogs of war in the Middle East. He has essentially told Iran that they are free to develop nuclear weapons and to meddle in the affairs of Lebanon, Syria, and whatever other country they choose. He has given tacit support to Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in their confrontation with Israel, as U.S. policy is to browbeat and intimidate the Israelis into accepting any agreement with them, all the while insisting on Israel's acquiescence to Iranian nuclear capability.
In his Cairo speech in 2009, Obama shamelessly blamed the West for all the current and historical conflicts with Islam and never once used the words "terrorism," "terrorist," or "war on terror." Earlier in the same year he met secretly with the Muslim Brotherhood, the progenitor of Hamas and al-Qaeda, thus legitimizing them with a wink and a nod.
Once the riots began in Egypt and other North African countries, regardless of what may have triggered them, the Islamists knew they had nothing to fear from the United States, as the American president and his administration had made no meaningful overtures to the true democratic movements in those countries. Obama chose instead to appeal to the radical elements, believing that by the sheer force of his personality and persuasion the Islamists would see the error of their ways.
While playing this game with Washington, the radicals knew that if they could get the population into the streets, they could maneuver the situation to their advantage. Today in Egypt, what began as student and middle-class demonstrations in the spring of 2011 has evolved into a government dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamist groups. The same is now true in Libya and Tunisia and soon will be in Yemen, among others.
In an eerie replay of history, the Middle East has become the Balkans of 1912-14.
Excellent TC. Good article and I'll bet the liberals ignore it 100%
Psst... it's called an OPINION PIECE & deserves to be ignored!
I'll stick to facts...
You do know what an Op-Ed id don't ya BB!
Poor BB - you sure are having a rough day little buddy!
That's OK Fiesty, I still like you.
"(President Obama)...cannot be nor is he trusted by other leaders on the world stage, as he is devoid of character and integrity."
The witless opinions of this right wing hate monger are as deserving of contempt as they are deserving of being ignored. The punctuation skills of the author leave a lot to be desired, too. Hasn't he ever heard of a comma?
psst - dishwater redhead is a twit - she,s meant to be ignored
"donning the hair shirt" WTF does that mean?
"image of weakness"
This is without a doubt the most uninformed, intentionally mischaracterized and lie filled post I've ever read on this blog and I've read some doozies.
Who got Osama ? case closed on foreign affairs.you lose !
So, the statement right off the bat...
A nation respected not only for its military and economic might, but more so for its dedication to the ideals of individual freedom and liberty is rudderless and adrift on a sea of uncertainty.
...is true. America can no longer claim the high ground in the ideals of freedom and liberty. Here is a brief history of how we lost it.
The forces of oppression have been attacking free nations for decades. To the liberals who ask ‘why’, we can answer very easily: because the spread of liberty is a threat to authoritarian rule. And the United States, alone among nations, was the creator and the harbinger of that liberty.
A simple reminder from Civics class: what our founders did right was to make our system of government a constitutional democracy, the extra twist that turned our democracy into liberty. Our sovereign territories made a covenant with each other to the constitution, and bound ourselves to one law and one fate under the law - a thing never before done in history.
Disputes between sovereign states became issues for lawyers in a courtroom, not soldiers in a battlefield. And there is no dispute that because of our unity under the law, our strength was multiplied. We spoke to the world with one voice, defeated every foe, and became the greatest nation on earth.
At the end of World War II, with a vow to keep our soldiers from having fought in vain, the US took the lead and initiated a global plan to keep such a war from happening again. Modeled after our own system, the idea was to create and grow a ‘critical mass’ of free nations, unified by covenant with each other to a single law, against which the forces of oppression could not hope to stand. We asked the free nations of the globe to join us in our compact, and they responded.
The United States founded the United Nations, and patterned its charter after the US constitution.
This was the weapon we launched against our enemies, and it had become powerful. The UN quadrupled in size. Nations from across the globe came to stand with us in our struggle to bring liberty to a broken world. And our enemies grew worried. They began to attack free nations, using any means at their disposal, while they still had support. Many of our own allies endured waves of withering attacks over the course of the last decades, yet held fast in our covenant to each other, and remained true to the rule of law.
We continued to grow and become stronger, as our foes became more isolated and desperate. Even Russia struggled to join the refuge of international law, proving ultimately the success of our power.
But meanwhile, inside America, some US conservatives began to imagine a threat in the growing strength of the UN. These suspicions gained traction in the 1980’s, when the UN - never intended as a rubber stamp for US foreign policy - disagreed with president Reagan’s decision to create and deploy terrorists as a weapon against the Soviet Union. The subsequent partisan anger spread into the mainstream with the help of sneering talk shows and conspiracy theories. A marked change showed in our language: many began to refer to the UN as ‘them’, not ‘us’.
And then 9/11 changed everything, as is often said. And perhaps one could have agreed that the UN was no longer a useful creation of the US in a post-9/11 world. Perhaps one could even believe that an alliance of free nations was no longer necessary in a world dominated by US military power, were it not for the fact that the ‘vision’ put forward by Mr. Bush and extolled by so many was exactly the same as the vision which created the UN in the first place.
Mr. Bush’s vision was precisely that we create and lead an alliance of free nations against which the forces of oppression will not stand. This was his great plan. But he made very clear that this alliance would not be the one we had already built for this purpose. In his run up to the Iraq invasion, he visibly attempted to destroy the alliance of our ‘old’ friends, the ones who stood shoulder to shoulder with America and its presidents over all those long, hard years. Need I mention Freedom Fries?
Bush lawyers openly called our treaties nothing more than words on paper to be discarded at will. This was the single most damaging statement America made in the whole mess. The credibility we once had was laid to waste. In doubling down on this, Bush said first that our allies' voices were irrelevant to him, then went to the UN not to make his case, but to lecture them like schoolchildren about the importance of loyalty to the US, and to tell them that anything less would make them our enemy.
While the average American citizen might have missed these things, world leaders do in fact pay attention, and from their statements and interviews it was clear that they understood quite well that the whole UN debacle was just a power struggle on behalf of those inside the US who fear a strong alliance of free nations bound to the rule of law. Conservatives made no secret of this, and it was openly spoken before the Iraq invasion and throughout the 2004 Republican convention. Their motto: we don’t need a permission slip to defend our country. But in the meantime, they also neglected their responsibility under the law to demonstrate to anyone that Iraq was a threat to the US or our allies.
This is why the free nations decided that Mr. Bush no longer desired to lead them, but to rule them. For them, his arrogance was not found in his walk, but in his contempt for the compacts to the rule of law made by former US presidents, and 50 years of hardships borne by our allies because of them.
Yes, the leaders of democratic nations all say that they like Obama better, but the damage has been done. Mr. Bush showed his hand, and it has not been forgotten. The free nations know that an alliance with the US is only one conservative president away from being worthless.
Since you are several dozen rungs down the evolutionary ladder from Feisty, PC, what does that say about you?
Come back when you actually have something to say. If that is possible.