Politico opined:
“President Barack Obama made a big gamble last January when he issued four recess appointments during a three-day break between meetings of the Senate — and with the court ruling Friday broadly undercutting his ability to make such appointments, he may have lost even bigger.”
That’s an understatement!
This ruling was the bitch-slap of all bitch-slaps. Not only did the court rule that Obama’s unprecedented pro-forma recess-not-recess appointments violate the Constitution, they went back and *gasp* read not only *gasp* the Constitution, but *double-gasp* The Federalist Papers! They ruled that not only were the intrasession pro-forma appointments unconstitutional, they ruled that all intrasession appointments are unconstitutional! Intersession won the day and all because of one little word: “the”. (You can read more about “the” here.)
The White House, The New York Times, and all the usual suspects are in spasms, naturally. The N.L.R.B., amazingly, and with the White House’s blessing, is blowing it off and continuing their work. And once again, the left is dusting off “Bush did it first!” like that matters. They hate the guy except when his bad behavior justifies theirs. Kindergarten! Bush, and, in fact, a dozen Presidents have made intrasession appointments. For decades. But no President had ever made a pro-forma appointment. That was uniquely brazen (In addition to the brazen pro-forma part, these appointments hadn’t even been submitted for Senate review. They’d been sitting there. Obama didn’t even go through the motions of starting the Senate review process. Didn’t lift a finger. Didn’t even give the Senate a chance to say no: just blew right past ’em. It’s breath-taking.) But that’s not even the point. The point is, through a dozen Presidents, nobody ever called them on it.
Until yesterday.
Lefties (bless their hearts 🙂 ) will never learn that just because it’s been done before and gotten away with doesn’t make it right! Especially when the Constitution is the rule!
Of course, the bonus is, it was Harry Reid who birthed the pro-forma strategy to stop Bush from making “recess” appointments. Harry & his evil minions got their chickens plucked but good with this one.
The ruling is a work of art, truly, for lovers of originalist interpretation. You can read it below or here.