If you're not familiar with this agency, the CFPB was a turd wrapped in the Dodd-Frank bill to fix the problems in our financial system by (here's the brilliant part) doing absolutely nothing about the problems in our financial system. The CFPB doesn't report to congress, but to the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Congress has no power over this agency; no financial strings, nothing. They effectively gelded themselves and extended the scalpel to likewise neuter the judicial branch. The law creating the CFPB removes any ability for judges to have any effect on it. An executive branch takeover of the financial sector.
But to make things really stink like old dead fish, the senate isn't even technically in recess, so a recess appointment is violation of the law!
Recess appointments are nothing new. Right off the top of my head, I remember John Bolton getting a recess appointment as UN ambassador under W, but recess appointments while the senate is in session are a new low in ethics (or a new high in tyranny, depending on how you like your dictators). Jonah Goldberg brings the smart to a summary of this sort of politics. It's worth reading the whole thing.
In 2007, the Democrats controlling the Senate were fed up with George W. Bush's recess appointments. Majority Leader Reid, feigning great sadness over the sorry state of our republic, resorted to the extraordinary tactic of keeping the Senate in pro-forma session so as to prevent the imperial Bush from doing an end-run around the confirmation process. The move was celebrated by liberal commentators as a brave and necessary assertion of congressional power and was supported by then-Sen. Barack Obama.How this works, is a couple of opposition party senators show up for a roll call or a little while every day, thereby keeping the senate in session, by law, if not by fact of actually giving each other hand jobs, or whatever they do up there. But imperial leader Obama said this is just a sham, and declared the recess appointment.
Fast-forward to this week. The Senate has once again been in pro-forma session in order to keep President Obama from making recess appointments. Reid agreed to the tactic as part of negotiations with Republicans last year.
With the alacrity one normally associates with court jesters and royal spittoon cleaners, Reid immediately endorsed the president's decision, accepting the logic that calls a maneuver he (Reid) invented a sham.And I love Goldberg's closing words so much, I'll quote them here:
So here we have Reid, a man who tried to enter the national stage by promising to be an honorable foe of the imperial presidency and the metastasizing growth of federal bureaucracies, thriving on the national stage by enabling exactly those trends when it suits his party. And it all it cost was his honor.
Seems like there is no end to news describing the rigor mortis of the rule of law. Train, train, train, for the law of the jungle is the law of the land now.
ReplyDeleteI repeat myself, but I anticipate this gelded Congress will not flinch even when BO declares himself the winner this November. He won't even need to show the numbers, any more than he has shown any other evidence requested or demanded of him. The record of the vote will be "sealed". If he even permits elections to take place.
ReplyDeleteCan you look at his recent behavior - including giving Russia access to our secret missile technology (http://arcticpatriot.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-to-on-nullifying-constitutional.html) - and believe there is _anything_ he will not do? Yes, I know that Clinton gave secret submarine propulsion technology to the Chinese, but even Clinton did not completely ignore both Congress and the will of the citizens of this country, as this wannabe dictator is doing.
We are seeing a long train of abuses here. If he is re-elected (I was going to say,"legitimately" but that isn't possible, given that he is not eligible), we had better decide if a dictatorship is something we really want to live under.
No end - and there's so much of this corruption of the law that it's a full time job for a small army just to keep up.
ReplyDeleteI've often speculated on whether the last presidential election was the last presidential election, and I can easily paint a scenario where I believe it could happen. I think I'll post that after I'm done with the weekend chores.
"And it all it cost was his honor."
ReplyDeleteWhat honor would that be? It assumes Reid has any honor left to give. Reid emptied that bucket a long time ago.
Yet there is no hypocrisy here, like we of the right are accusing. There is not a shred of hypocrisy in anything the Democrats do, and I mean that sincerely, not sarcastically.
Policies, constitutionalities and political consistencies are irrelevant to the Democrats' agenda. They have only one question ever to answer: Who is to rule, that is all.