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This is truly Orwellian: the latest and greatest Executive Branch/Federal Reserve power grab is labeled "consumer protection." I am indebted to correspondent Jim S. who seems to be one of the few Americans to have actually sorted through this monstrosity and gleaned its true nature: an unprecedented extension of Executive (i.e. Imperial Presidency) and Federal Reserve power.

Whatever happened to the American dream of going to college, landing a great job and living happily ever after? College is supposed to be about getting off to a great start, but it’s a financial noose that threatens to kill our young and everybody else too. The U.S. has the dubious distinction of now having more than $1 trillion in outstanding student loan debt. The crisis has the full attention of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which in a recent blog , presented its sobering findings. “Unlike other consumer credit products, student debt keeps growing at a steady clip. Students...

Republican senators announced Friday that they plan to challenge President Obama's recent controversial appointments in court. Thirty-nine GOP senators have signed onto a letter announcing their intention to file a joint amicus brief in a court challenge against Obama's recess appointments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board last month. "We refuse to stand by as this President arrogantly casts aside our Constitution and defies the will of the American people under the election-year guise of defending them," Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said in a statement. The White House has argued that the recess appointments...

Did President Barack Obama’s appointment of Richard Cordray to be director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau without a Senate confirmation vote violate the Constitution? The answer is plainly yes.Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution says the president “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint … Officers of the United States … but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone (and) … The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess...

I called my rep on C-Span this morning, Steve Southerland (FL-2) My question was, "Did President Obama violate the Constitution when he appointed Richard Cordray to head the CFPB without consent of the Senate?" He said Obama crossed the line, yet it was okay because the Senate was in recess. My line went dead. So no, I was not allowed to tell him the Senate was not in recess and therefore any regulations from the CFPB were null and void. I listen to Leftist moonbats get 2-3 minutes to beat up pubbies over social justice, the mean corporations, the one...

Some legal experts, including those who have sided with President Obama on other constitutional issues, think there is a good chance the courts could overturn his recent recess appointments. Legal experts said courts could invalidate Obama’s appointments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) because there is scant precedent on the issue.  “It’s untested ground. If I were a judge, I could write out an opinion either way. There’s no clear precedent,” said Charles Fried, a constitutional expert at Harvard Law School who served as solicitor general under former President Reagan. The Justice Department...

If Lizzy [Elizabeth] Warden is truly opposed to Wall Street money, then shouldn’t she reject the DSCC’s money? Otherwise she is just using the DSCC to funnel in Wall Street money.

In the midst of the administration’s efforts to drastically reduce the nation’s military personnel and hike pay for government employees comes this gem: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the new director of which was unconstitutionally appointed by President Obama on Wednesday, is prepared to pay a salary of more than $100,000 for an employee to assist in planning bureau events. According to a job listing on USAJobs.com, the federal government’s official employment classifieds site, the CFPB is seeking an “invitations coordinator” to “support management of CFPB’s participation in external events by developing and maintaining databases and event calendar and providing...

Two days after defying Republicans and appointing Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, President Obama visited the new agency to take a little time to gloat. Making a victory lap of sorts at the independent agency, Obama cracked a joke, telling employees that he came by to help their new director move in. More seriously, a seemingly content Obama called the man he tapped a “great director who is tailor-made to lead this agency.” With Cordray at the helm, after months of delay, the agency will help Americans better digest mortgages, student loans and credit card fees...

Actual title is : Obama violated Senate norms to appoint this guy? New financial protection chief accused of misusing state funds (FR needs more space for title- I always have to alter Aaron's titles to post them) Sparking Republican charges he violated Senate norms, President Obama today used his recess appointment powers to name a head for the controversial Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. KleinOnline first reported last month that consumer groups had been calling on Obama to seize rarely-used powers in to make a recess appointee for Richard Cordray, the nominee for what the government bills as a new consumer...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a man whose political success is largely attributable to the aura of befuddled incompetence he uses to disarm his adversaries, was a failed Watergate baby. In 1974, a slew of often sanctimonious and very liberal Democratic politicians rode the tide of understandable national disgust with Richard Nixon to Congress. Then the lieutenant governor of Nevada, Reid ran for the U.S. Senate, hoping to tie his opponent to the "imperial presidency" that had allegedly sprung up ex nihilo under Nixon. Given Nevada's inherent conservatism (at least back then), Reid cast himself as an incorruptible champion of...

Mr. Obama is claiming an open-ended authority to determine that the Senate is in recess, despite that body's own judgment and the factual realities. That is an astonishing and, so far as we can tell, unprecedented power grab. It is not up to the president to decide whether the Senate is organized properly or working hard enough. However much the supposedly power-hungry President George W. Bush may have resented the Senate's practice of staying "in session" to defeat his recess-appointment power, he nevertheless respected the Senate's judgment on the point. The president has done his new appointees and the public...

Defenders of President Obama’s unprecedented “recess” appointments of Richard Cordray to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and three members to the National Labor Relations Board argue that the Constitution is vague on when Congress is in session and that the President can therefore take a “functionalist” approach that considers whether the Senate is available to vote on nominations. Yet even the President doesn’t buy that argument. Proof is that on December 23, President Obama signed a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut.  He said that Congress passed the bill “in the nick of time” and that it was...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — One day after being appointed through a controversial presidential maneuver, the new head of a consumer watchdog agency announced he is launching a program immediately to supervise a broad new swath of businesses including payday lenders, private student lenders and local mortgage lenders. “We will begin dealing face-to-face with payday lenders, mortgage servicers, mortgage originators, private student lenders, and other firms that often compete with banks but have largely escaped any meaningful federal oversight,” said Richard Cordray, the newly appointed chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. [Snip] Any legal challenge to the Obama appointment is likely...

One Senate Republican says that President Barack Obama's installation of Richard Cordray as Consumer Financial Protection Bureau head without Senate confirmation is irrelevant — and that he may not have all the new powers granted to the office under the law that created the agency. "The irony is that while this recess appointment may advance the White House's political goals, it does nothing to advance the work of the CFPB. The statute creating the CFPB makes clear that only Senate confirmation of a director — not a recess appointment — can activate the new powers of this agency," Sen. Rob...

I'm no lawyer, but: As someone who strongly supported a recess appointment for Richard Cordray to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, I'm confused as to why President Obama chose to act today. Had he appointed Cordray yesterday, during a brief period when the Senate was technically in recess, the action would have been supported by precedent. Apparently, though, that appointment would have lasted only through 2012. By appointing Cordray today, Obama can keep him at CFPB through 2013. The trouble is that the Senate isn't in recess. For complicated reasons the Republicans have the ability to prevent the Senate...

Senate Republicans have tried to prevent the White House from acting by keeping the Senate technically in “pro forma” session until senators return to Washington later this month. One way around the GOP maneuvering would have been for the White House to appoint Mr. Cordray during the short window in between congressional sessions. That window was open Tuesday morning, and some expected Mr. Obama to act then. But he didn’t, and administration officials maintained that they still have all options on the table. That’s because the White House has concluded that it can make the appointment even if the Senate...

Richard Cordray's 'Heroes' Occupy Banks and Private Homes By John Berlau on 12.5.11 @ 6:09AM Obama consumer nominee's long support of radical East Side Organizing Project. When asked about the "Occupy Wall Street" movement in October, Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren praised it to the hilt. "I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do," she told the Daily Beast. Yet when pressed in November on the OWS adherents' increasingly violent tactics, she told a Boston TV interviewer: "Everybody has to follow the law. There's no exception on that." But Warren's apparent disavowal of the tactics of OWS...

Think Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is just non-peaceable assembly of malcontents and miscreants literally infesting American cities? Think again. The OWS agenda is now law of the land in the form of a government agency called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The CFPB was created under the Dodd-Frank financial -- ahem -- "reform" legislation when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress in 2009. The law was signed by President Obama, who simultaneously manages to be Goldman-Sachs’ best friend and an OWS sympathizer. Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, who is now running for the senate seat held by Sen. Scott...

In President Obama’s recent address to the nation, he pledged to cut costly regulations to help promote economic growth. Of course, Obama had no intention of reducing government red tape. That is why he continues to demand the installation of a new regulator – Richard Cordray – to head the powerful Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The CFPB was created by the Dodd-Franks financial reform bill. Sen. Dodd described the Bureau as a regulatory agency “one like we have never seen before.” The Bureau was given huge power to regulate much of the economy at the whims of its Director...