Reid to Bush: Suck on THESE

Over the last few years El Presidente has abused the recess appointments process in ways that were, well, completely unprecedented. Quite innovative too, if you hate democracy and all it stands for. Have a right wing radical bomb-thrower who could never, ever get approved by the Senate? Have a bunch of cronies you want to put into power without any qualifications whatsoever? Just want to piss off the legislative branch by bending them over a chair? Well, then, use an outmoded procedure in the Constitution, intended for use in emergency situations to fill vacant, and vital, positions in government, while the Senate is on vacation!

The idea of appointing during a recess isn't really such a strange one when you think about the time the Constitution was written. Traveling back to your home state was a long and arduous trek for a lot of Senators, I mean, would you like to travel a few hundred miles, in winter, along muddy rutted roads in a horse drawn carriage with wooden wheels and no shocks? At the same time, Americans sort of expect their representatives to live in their districts part of the time, and before telecommunications, it was hard to talk to them without having them around at least every once in a while. Plus they might have actual human reasons for going home, holidays with families and the like.

So they put in a way for the President to fill posts if somebody dies while the Senate isn't in town. Logical, really. It could take a substantial amount of time in the old days to call them back, even to inform them they NEEDED to come back to DC. You can't really go without a Secretary of State for a month. Remember how the last battle of the war of 1812 was fought 2 full weeks after the war was over? Yeah. We're talking about that sort of nonsense.

However, in recent political epochs, recess appointments have traditionally been used to squeak nominees who would otherwise have a dubious shot at confirmation through, as well as occasional lowly flunkies that nobody really cared about. Bush took that to a whole new level, appointing grandiosely unpopular and unfit people via recess appointments, even if the Senate had made it perfectly clear they were NOT approved for the job.

So Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader, has had enough. He plans to prevent recess appointments by removing recesses from the calendar. Simply put, the Senate will never shut down for more than 10 days in a row. He's going to get a local Senator, say someone from next door in Delaware or what not, to drive in once every 10 days, open and close the Senate, and thus close the loophole that our Little King has been abusing these last 7 agonizing years.

Harry Reid, whatever else you can say about him, has a lot of balls. He didn't let the mob intimidate him with assassination attempts back home, and he doesn't let Georgie intimidate him in DC. Bush will be feeling this pimp slap for a long time.
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/20/reids-plan-to-block-bushs-recess-appointments/