[Washington Post] President B.O. formally notified Congress on Thursday of his intent to raise the nation's debt ceiling by $1.2 trillion, two weeks after he had postponed the request to give politicians more time to consider the action.
Congress will have had 15 days to say no before the nation's debt ceiling automatically is raised from $15.2 trillion to $16.4 trillion.
In a letter to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), Obama wrote that "further borrowing is required to meet existing commitments."
Obama had sought to make the request at the end of last month, when the Treasury came within $100 billion of its borrowing limit. However, facts are stubborn; statistics are more pliable... with Congress on recess, politicians from both parties asked the president to hold off. The House is out of session until Jan. 17, and the Senate until Jan. 23.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/13/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
They certainly don't show any signs of ending this madness. What could possibly be the reason?
[The Hill] The Department of Justice offered a defense Thursday for President B.O.'s controversial decision to make several recess appointments while Congress was holding pro forma sessions.
In a memo, Justice argued the pro forma sessions held every third day in the Senate do not constitute a functioning body that can render advice and consent on the president's nominees. It said the president acted consistently under the law by making the appointments.
"Although the Senate will have held pro forma sessions regularly from January 3 to January 23, in our judgment, those sessions do not interrupt the intrasession recess in a manner that would preclude the president from determining that the Senate remains unavailable throughout to 'receive communications from the president or participate as a body in making appointments,'" Virginia Seitz, assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, wrote in the memo dated Jan. 6.
The Office of Legal Counsel concluded the president has authority to make recess appointments during a recess and that Congress can only prevent the president from making such appointments "by remaining continuously in session and available to receive and act on nominations," not by holding pro forma sessions.
Republicans, who had set up the pro forma sessions to prevent Obama from making the appointments, are expected to challenge them in court.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/13/2012 00:00 ||
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Yet somehow Bush respected the Dems when they did this exact thing to prevent recess appointments. The GOP has got to start making the Dems play by the same rules they set. Or they may as well put the Kick Me sign on thier own back, and be ready be beclown themselves again. This is just another example of the DC GOP being gutless and more interested in being the country club instead of governing the country.
#2
The serious problem here is in allowing the Executive, ANY Executive, to determine the operating rules for the Legislature; the Senate is not in Recess unless the SENATE says it is in Recess. If this stands, where does it stop? Recess appointments during lunch break? If Congress doesn't pass a Budget (as it hasn't for years) can the Executive just declare Congress immaterial and pass his own budget? Can the Executive just dispense with Congress and Declare War on his own? (Oh, right, already sort of did that by Declaring Kinetic Action or such.) The people favoring these tactics are either very short-sighted and don't see the danger to their side if control changes hands, or they are very confident that control will never change hands again.
What an incredibly shortsighted and stupid move by B. O..
Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
01/13/2012 9:07 Comments ||
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Mike R....maybe not so stupid...only stupid if someone calls you on it and so far Congress has not lifted a finger so like any dictator...he keeps rolling on.
History favors the bold so if we want to be on the right side of it...time to get off our collective asses and do something to get Dr. Evil out of office..
#5
Warthog,
I have an operational definition of good and bad.
Good is anything you do that benefits you.
Bad is ... anything that you do that benefits you.
Who sets out to bang their own thumb? We only consciously set out to do what we think will benefit us.
Bad benefits you right now but leads to your long term determent.
Good almost always hurts right now but leads to your long term betterment.
B.O. wants to pick a fight with the House Republicans and thinks that the MSM will back him. B.O. has traded the long term health of our constitutional checks and balances for short term political gain.
One argument is don't give the president a fight that he clearly wants. Leave it to the GOP presidential candidates to fight B. O. on this issue.
I think that B.O. made a mistake. People hate ObamaCare not only because of what the bill contained, but how he went about shoving it down our throats. This is more of the same. B.O. might as well have painted a sign that says "I am a Chicago political machine tyrant".
Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
01/13/2012 13:03 Comments ||
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#6
Though it's rather difficult to distinguish, it's important to note that power grabs of *individual* presidents coexist with power grabs by the office of the presidency. That is, often they are parallel, but sometimes they are not.
It could be said that almost since the founding of the presidency, there has always been a general movement towards an "imperial presidency", that is irresistible to anyone who sits in the chair, be they Democrat or Republican.
The only way this can be changed is if a candidate, before they are elected, have a personal intention to *diminish* the power of the presidency. You can see how this runs counter to the psychology of achieving the office in the first place.
"Elect me so that I can work with congress to reduce the power of the presidency." As bizarre as that sounds, this is desperately needed to break our spiraling descent into monarchy.
#7
The GOP has got to start making the Dems play by the same rules they set.
The Pubs don't control the Senate, and the Majority Leader (the same who blocked Bush from making recess appointments using the same pro-forma sessions) now sez it's okay to do this. So it's hard for the GOP to do anything right now.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/13/2012 13:47 Comments ||
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Moose: I have to agree about the spiraling descent.
The Roman Republic collapsed and became an Empire over about a century or so. From the Gracchi brothers to Gaius Marius to Sulla to Pompey to Caesar to Anthony to Octavian, there was 1) a will to get one's way at the expense of others 2) a willingness to bend the rules of the mos maiorum, and 3) a willingness to use violence to get the first two.
Gibbons was able to draw a near straight line from Republic to Empire. But if you had asked the Romans at any point along the way, they would have denied fiercely that the Republic could ever fall.
It did. Ours could too. But good luck finding a modest man who wants to be president, who is electable, who will roll the power of the presidency back.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/13/2012 13:51 Comments ||
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#9
Dated after the act. Cute.
And if it hadn't come to a favorable conclusion, want to bet it would have been declared a "privileged communication" and buried a mile deep?
#10
During an election year when the battle lines have been drawn between government overreach and its all Congresses fault. Beyond bafflingly stupid. If the Republicans can't use this to capture all 50 states they are pathetic.
"President Barack Obama's decision last week to snub Congress and make a series of recess appointments while the Senate claimed it was technically in session had the legal blessing of the Justice Department, according to a formal legal opinion released Thursday.
"We conclude that while Congress can prevent the president from making any recess appointments by remaining continuously in session and available to receive and act on nominations, it cannot do so by conducting pro forma sessions during a recess," the head of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, Virginia Seitz, wrote in a 23-page opinion.
The general thrust of Seitz's opinion is that the Senate's pro forma sessions are no obstacle to a recess appointment because the Senate is not truly open for business during sessions that may last only minutes and can involve only a single senator.
"The text of the Constitution and precedent and practice thereunder support the conclusion that the convening of periodic pro forma sessions in which no business is to be conducted does not have the legal effect of interrupting an intrasession recess otherwise long enough to qualify as a 'Recess of the Senate' under the Recess Appointments Clause," she wrote.
Another awkward fact acknowledged in Seitz's opinion is that less than two years ago the Justice Department sent the Supreme Court a letter-style brief noting that "the Senate may act to foreclose [recess appointments] by declining to recess for more than two or three days at a time over a lengthy period."
Seitz insisted that the letter, from then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan, didn't directly address the situation Obama faced earlier this month. I quoted this from the original article and givbe full credit to it's authors.
This is an Obama Power Grab in that the effect would be that the President has the authority to decide when the Senate is or is not in session.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
01/13/2012 00:00 ||
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This is an Obama Power Grab in that the effect would be that the President Caesar has the authority to decide when the Senate is or is not in session.
If it is a Republican president, its not okay, in fact civilization as we know it will cease to exist and the seas will dry up and the snail darter will become extinct
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
01/13/2012 10:16 Comments ||
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#3
That is absolutely right.
Worse, it sets a precident for future executives to do so.
#2
If it was anybody else, I would be shocked by how politically idiotic the governor's actions appear to be. One doesn't see "Haley Barbour" and "politically idiotic" in the same sentence, until now.
I agree that there most be more to this story.
Did he sign something that an aid put in-front of him without reading it? Does somebody have sound and pictures on the governor?
Does he plan on retiring to another state?
Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
01/13/2012 11:51 Comments ||
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Eh, ... must be .... Sorry about that.
Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
01/13/2012 11:59 Comments ||
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Sad times for the Greater Gulf Coast Co-Prosperity Sphere. First Perry goes OWS, now Haley's committing suicide by pardon.
Maybe I should start drinking now in preparation for voting in November.
Congress is considering HR 3166 and S. 1698 also known as the Enemy Expatriation Act, sponsored by Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Charles Dent (R-PA).
This bill would give the US government the power to strip Americans of their citizenship without being convicted of being hostile against the United States.
In other words, you can be stripped of your nationality for engaging in, or purposefully and materially supporting, hostilities against the United States. Legally, the term hostilities means any conflict subject to the laws of war but considering the fact that the War on Terror is a little ambiguous and encompassing, any action could be labeled as supporting terrorism.
The new law would change a part of US Code 1481. Compare 3166 to 1481 and the change is small. The new section makes no reference to being convicted as it does in section (7).
So even though the language of the NDAA has been revised to exclude American citizens, the US government merely has to strip Americans of their citizenship and the NDAA will apply. And they will be able to do so without convicting the accused in a court of law.
#2
I'm against this. Requiring a conviction in a court of law is a safeguard we should not dismiss. If they're concerned about an open federal court, have an administrative court followed by appellate review. That's done for other situations and it works.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/13/2012 21:03 Comments ||
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See also DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > [Russia Today] US GOVT. COULD STRIP CITIZENSHIP FROM AMERICANS UNDER ENEMY EXPATRIATION [Act].
*** cough **** cough **** cough **** ....
Ah yes, mighty plans by alleged Leaders + Cronies that cannot, + WON'T BE, "CONFIRMED OR DENIED" TO THE PEOPLE.
#4
Start with half of Congress, including the clowns who introduced this.
You can't take citizenship away from a native-born citizen, although they can certainly renounce it themselves. You can strip it from a naturalized citizen, for cause, and they can be sent back to the country they came from. Where are you going to send an American citizen you decided to take citizenship from?
If you're pissed off at the citizens who have joined Al-Q, put them under the in jail forever - if you can catch and convict them. If you can't, ignore them - or ridicule them.
Idiots.
Posted by: Barbara ||
01/13/2012 22:52 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Washington Post] 
