A round of applause for Jim Webb and a few Senate staffers

Bucky

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Thu Nov-22-07 11:57 AM
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A round of applause for Jim Webb and a few Senate staffers

Democrats Move to Block Bush Appointments

Of course, there was no real business to conduct. But fearing that President Bush would again use a Congressional recess to install disputed executive branch appointees without Senate confirmation, Democrats convened the Senate for the first of four microsessions to be held during the holiday break, precisely to thwart such an end run.

�I am glad to see the leadership stepped up here,� said Jim Webb, the junior senator from Virginia, called upon by the majority to open the Senate with a skeleton staff for the express purpose of immediately closing it down.

At Harry Reid's request, the junior senator from Virginia is continuing to work in the senate right through the Thanksgiving holiday. Not a single day off--not Thursday, not Sunday. By giving up his holiday--and thereby forcing a few civil servants to give up their holidays--Webb is able to keep the US Senate from going out of session. And because the Senate isn't going out of session, President Bush isn't able to make any recess appointments.

Bush, of course, has used the power of recess appointments in ways never imagined by the Framers. The ability to make recess appointments was created back when Congress wasn't expected to meet for several months at a time. It was common in the early days of the Republic for Congressmen and Senators to stay out of the swampy Capital City all summer long. The law required no meetings at all between their March inaugurations and the official commencement in early December. Thus the president, by necessity, was allowed the power to appoint someone during a period of recess to an important Senate-conformation-required office for up to a twelve month period.

By the late 20th century, with Congress cooking up new laws on a practically year-round basis, this power was hardly necessary. Recesses rarely ran more than two months at a stretch. The tradition evolved that presidents would only use their recess appointment power for noncontroversial characters and second tier positions--FDA commissioners, ambassadors to micronations, members of the Ketchup Board.

Bush's people saw it differently. To them, the power of recess appointment was a get out jail free card, the very concept of such a thing no doubt tickling their ears. They could put in a convert-the-gays lunatic as Surgeon General or a bomb-everybody misanthrope as UN ambassador. They even wanted to re-recess-appoint the UN ambassador when it turned out that after 12 months on the job he still couldn't convince a majority of a then-Republican senate that their guy could handle the job.

As the administration grew increasingly recalcitrant--like an impetuous child resisting vegetables or household chores--the threats and murmurs about using the recess appointment to circumvent the Advise and Consent clause of the US Constitution grew as well. While the Senators and their staffers were planning to go off to visit their families for the five-day holiday weekend, the Bushites began plotting what could have been a few--or may have become a veritable orgy of--recess appointments of people the majority Democrats just couldn't stomach.

For a five-day holiday. Think about that.

Why, it's almost like you can't ever drop your guard around these people. I'm so glad the Senate Democrats are finally waking up to this problem. They don't have a Republican administration staffed by people we all just happen to disagree with on a few partisan issues. They're locked in the basement with a snarling, rabid wolf. They can't move an inch; they can't drop their guard for a second. No one's going to unlock the basement door and get the dog out of there for another 15 months. Look away for one second and that beast is gonna tear another bite out of the Constitution, or rip up the fragile balance of power between Iran and Saudi Arabia, or eviscerate another anti-pollution regulation.

The direction this conflict is heading in is obvious. As the senators have to guard against the Thanksgiving holiday recess, they'll also have to guard against Christmas (Who's starting a war over Christmas, now?). Next, the three day weekends for Martin Luther King day in January and for Presidents' Day in February may also be deemed "recesses" against which the wolf of state will have to be muzzled. Perhaps any old two-day weekend is a recess in which Bush can appoint his cronies. Every Sunday morning between now and 2009 we could run the risk of waking up to headlines reading "acting-Secretary of Health and Human Services Charles Manson."

So, bravo to the senators who said "We will not drop our guard." It's pathetic that we have to ask our congressmen to act not as checks and balances against executive power, but as babysitters against mewling barbarians out to subvert the rule of law. And bravissimo to Jim Webb and the staffers who are giving up a good portion of their holiday to safeguard our country and our laws from the wolves we've tolerated in office far too long.