You can’t get a nominee confirmed, so you bypass Congress and appoint your most controversial nominee. There was a time when recess appointments were not used for nominees that could never be approved. Just more evidence that you are not the moderate that you claim to be. You have no intention of working with anybody who does not share your radically conservative views.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040116/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_pickering_5
In a year when it may be critical for Rove to get back to this “uniter, not a divider” stuff, when an outraged and therefore energized opposition is his greatest danger, he still put his instincts to get 'em ahead of even that. This was a political blunder, even though he announced it on a Friday afternoon before a long weekend, the traditional way to minimize repercussions.
Doesn’t surprise me in the least.
The man’s been quite up front about the fact that His Lordship is gonna do whatever His Lordship feels like doing, and that Congress and the American people (and for that matter, the entire rest of the population of the planet) can just go pound sand.
And it’s starting to look like he’s going to get to do this for four more years… :smack:
If Bush can go ahead and appoint Pickering, why the approval game at all?
Big deal. It’s politics as usual. Clinton did it, Bush did it, and I’m sure it won’t be the last time it’ll be done. If it were really so “evil” how come it’s allowed by law? Of course, it’s allowed because both parties use it when it suits them.
Just for the benefit for anyone who is reading this thread and is not a lying sack of shit, Charles Pickering had enough votes to be confirmed by the Senate. That vote was prevented the threat of filibusters by a few extremists in the Democratic party – an almost unprecedented abuse of the filibuster privelege. You know, in case you were wondering who fired the first shot in the “non-bipartisan” wars. And as hermann points out, the recess appointment has been used for judicial appointments 300 times so far, most recently by President Clinton for a judge who could not garner a Senate majority.
None of this will make Pickering a good judge – he’ll be mediocre at best. But the OP and the echos of it are simply a lie.
Oh, I think not.
If, as you readily admit, Mr. Pickering is not a shining light of jurisprudence, what is the urgency to have him on a bench? Is the Republic in danger of faltering without the sage decisions of Mr. Pickering? You say no, I entirely agree.
Then if urgency is not the motive, what is? Ponder, ponder, ponder. You know, having thought about it, I think its a political type gesture. It kisses the butt of that part of the Pubbie constituency that dotes on gruff, manly gestures of assertiveness from a no-nonsense leader who operates on gut instinct (or what might be called "intuition, if it weren’t so femmy…) GeeDubya as Bear Bryant. (Winston Churchill was last week, then Carl Sagan briefly…)
There are no worthy jurists without partisan baggage, whether justified or not? No available centrists who pass muster? Nothing will answer our present emergency but Mr. Pickering?
No, I think not.
Would the republic have faltered without the sage decisions of Sandra Day O’Connor or Thurgood Marshall? What was the urgency there?
Methinks you need to come up with a better argument, elucidator, because that one is exceptionally weak.
Thanks for the laugh. If you had any interest in facts, you’d know that a filibuster takes over 40 votes out of 100. In this case, that’s nearly all the Democrats in the Senate. But a thoughtless, hatefilled kneejerker would call it “a few extremists”. Someone with any interest in facts would also know a little more about the history of filibustering before calling it “unprecedented”, and would also note that the Senate has approved nearly all of Bush’s nominees and has given hearings to every single damn one. Compare that to their record during the last administration - that is, if you yourself aren’t a “lying sack of shit”, a matter that is open to very serious doubt.
Pickering’s support of a cross-burner helps ensure that the GOP quest to be seen as not racist is over for another electoral cycle. How much longer do we have to hear about the “party of Lincoln” crap?
Recess appointments are only valid until the the next Congress takes office, which would be January of 2005. Pickering will have a very short leash, and Bush will have to nominate him again a year from now. I will venture that it will be even harder to confirm him them. This is not over, not by a long shot.
Won’t even get that far, even if Bush is still President next year. Sez the AP today:
So he’d be on the bench less than a year, not enough time to do anything but piss people off in an election year.
This was rich, though:
All of the die-hard Bush-haters bitching in this thread should take a moment to Google names like Bill Lann Lee, James Hormel and Roger Gregory. I do wonder where their love of Senatorial privilege lay when their own Dear Leader was the chief executive…
Do you ever try to honestly represent views you don’t share, Dewey? Ever? I know simple bashing is more fun for you than responsible citizenship, but you really need to grow the fuck up.
This isn’t “love of Senate privilege” in play at all. Try another guess.
Lying dormant, awaiting the day when GeeDubya, that paragon of truth and candor, should grace our nation. Oh happy day! now that hypocrisy is banished and a “uniter, not a divider” is installed into the Oval Office.
Your retort is crisp, concise, and vacuous. We’ve come to expect no less.
I say cut the OP some slack on this. We are, after all, in the Pit, not GD.
Sure, it’s politics as usual, but that don’t make it “right”. The sense here is that this represents one more aspect of Bush’s tendancy to only compromise with the other party under extreme duress. I think his actions have demonstrated that to be more or less accurate.
Now, there are those who think that compromise is a dirty word. When matters of principle are involved, I’d agree with that. The principle here is more along the lines of how much discretion the Senate should allow the prez wrt judicial appointments. Lots to argue about here, as the “advice and consent” clause has many interpretations. And a careful reading of the clause allowing recess session appointments would indicate this was more for cases where the vacancy occurred during the recess, not that it merely carried over into a recess (my bolding):
Of course it was right!
The Democrats in the Senate abused the system and turn about is fair play.
It’s also smart politically. This will help cement Bush’s base – which was seriously grumbling after his illegal immigrants proposal.
Those on the Left already detest him so their reaction isn’t important.
As for the muddled middle, this is just the type of thing they either don’t notice, or can’t understand, or don’t care about.
Do pray tell what was “dishonest” about my post. Opponents of the Bush administration are upset because he used a recess appointment to (temporarily) bypass the Senate confirmation process. Bush’s predecesssor did the exact same thing. I’m simply wondering why the same tactic is simultaneously appropriate for Lee, Hormel and Gregory but inappropriate for Pickering.
Kindly explain how I’ve been dishonest, or grow the fuck up yourself.
It’s cute that you call my post “vacuous” and yet never bother to actually respond to the point I raised.
Point? You made a point? Well, sort of.
“Hypocrisy!” you cry in alarm and dismay, aghast at this entirely new development in the Body Politic.
But you indulge yourself in a bit of fudging, when you pretend that the issue is “Senatorial privilege”. The first person to mention it is yourself, no? The OP suggests, rightly, in my opinion, that Fearless Misleader intends this action as a thumb in the eye of his opposition.
Now, of course, if you can demonstrate that there is an urgency to this assignment of Mr. Pickering to the bench, do so. Perhaps some emergency that overides and negates any consideration of “bi-partisanship”. What that crisis might be I leave to your imagination, mine own is not fertile enough to concoct such a fantasy.
The OP states that GeeDubya has abandoned “bi-partisanship”. A fair case might well be made that he cannot abandon something he never intended in the first instance. If you wish to advance that position, you’ll get little enough argument from me. But in retort to the OP, you decry Dem hypocrisy.
Fair enough. “Vacuous” is not the word, I withdraw it. “Irrelevent” is the word.
Well this debate is over. If it’s The Law, it must be good. :rolleyes:
That is, ultimately, the issue in play: the Senate’s prerogative to advise and consent to executive appointments.
And the Lee, Hormel and Gregory nominations weren’t?
What crisis was there demanding the immediate appointment of Bill Lann Lee? Why is a recess appointment designed to foil one’s political opposition viciously partisan when Bush does it, but not so when Clinton does it?
A little less Democratic partisanship would have made the issue moot – by, say, letting Bush’s nominees come to the Senate floor for a vote, and allowing the Democratic members of that body to vote their consciences. Partisanship is a two-way street.
Furthermore: why should Republicans do the political equivelant of unilateral disarmament? Why should they abandon tactics which their opponents have apparently considered perfectly legitimate in the past? If the use of recess appointments for controversial candidates is illegitimate, it should be illegitimate for everyone; otherwise, it should be considered a perfectly fair tactic.
Not nearly so as your own words. I halfway expect you to next be shrieking “I am shocked, SHOCKED, to discover politics in Washington, D.C.!”