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Last week, we learned a little more about President Obama’s nominee to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). We started the week knowing that Richard Griffin is a defendant in an embezzlement and racketeering lawsuit. He is named in the portion of the suit dealing with a cover up. According to The Wall Street Journal, “Mr. Griffin is named in a federal complaint filed in October by 10 members of IUOE Local 501, out of Los Angeles, which describes a ‘scheme to defraud [the local] out of revenue, cost savings and membership,’ by means of kickbacks, bribery, violent threats and...

LOS ANGELES, May 29, 2013 —President Obama is drowning in corruption scandals. Whether you believe he is an innocent victim, incompetent bungler or nefarious schemer, one thing is certain. These scandals will not disappear just because he and his supporters want them to. We asked the question in January,is President Obama corrupt? “Solyndra, Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the NLRB suing Boeing, and Lisa Jackson’s EPA emails are all serious scandals involving government corruption at the highest levels. At the minimum they show Obama to be ignorant or indifferent to what’s going on in his own administration.” Those words appeared here...

All 45 GOP senators signed a brief calling Obama's appointments an unconstitutional abuse of power. The Senate GOP conference has asked the Supreme Court to invalidate President Obama's January 2012 recess appointments as an unconstitutional abuse of power. All 45 Repubican senators on Tuesday signed on to a brief arguing that Obama overstepped his authority in naming members to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) while the Senate was technically still in session. “The president’s decision to circumvent the American people by installing his appointees at a powerful federal agency while the Senate was continuing to hold sessions, and without...

The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals struck a huge blow against a much-abused presidential power yesterday in invalidating Craig Becker's 2010 appointment to the National Labor Relations Board. I think it's great news -- the recess appointment is an outdated accommodation for the executive branch, and no president from any party should have such power...But bear in mind that although this decision does resemble a recent one by the D.C. Circuit, it isn't about Obama's flagrantly illegal appointments to the NLRB from last January. This calls nearly all recess appointments into question, and it gives the Supreme Court a...

A second appeals court has joined the D.C. Circuit in ruling that President Barack Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were unconstitutional, concluding that some board actions taken in the wake of those appointments were also invalid. The issue has far-reaching implications for both the NLRB and other boards, including Obama’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has been a frequent target of conservatives and whose director was a recess appointment. The 2-1 decision Thursday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (posted here) found that the presidential recess appointment power is limited to breaks...

Labor is mounting an all-out push to fill the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) as the agency faces the prospect of being sidelined for the rest of President Obama’s second term. Unions of all stripes have told Senate Democrats that they need to move on all five of Obama's nominees to the labor board, even if it takes a controversial change to filibuster rules to make it happen. “Without this, there's nothing [to protect workers],” said Larry Cohen, the president of the Communications Workers of America. (CWA) “It's a floor and now the floor is caving in as well.” The...

If you’ve been watching President Obama react to this week’s government scandals, you’ve probably noticed something. Whenever things go south, it always seems to happen in some agency that President Obama doesn’t actually control — an agency that is “independent,” either in the strict legal sense or in a more informal one. This week, a lot of things have gone wrong in the federal government, and Obama suddenly seems to control less of his administration than ever before. In fact, in asserting the independence of every major agency that screws something up, Obama is making a strong case that we...

A federal appeals on Tuesday court struck down regulations that would require posters about union rights in the workplace. The court said the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) violated the First Amendment when it mandated that businesses place notices in the workplace and on their company websites informing employees of their rights to unionize. Business that failed to comply would have faced charges of promoting “unfair labor practices.” Industry groups, which quickly challenged the rule after it was issued, cheered the ruling. Jay Timmons, the president and chief executive of the National Association of Manufacturers, pledged to remain vigilant against...

Setting the stage for a constitutional showdown, the Obama administration on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to rule that presidents have broad authority to make certain appointments without Senate approval. In January the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that three appointments to the panel, which normally has five members, were invalid. In the brief filed on Thursday, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli defended the recess appointment powers of the president, disputing the court's conclusion that it can only be used in the period between formal sessions of the Senate. If the appeals court ruling was...

Despite the threat of a Presidential veto, on Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Preventing Greater Uncertainty in Labor-Management Relations Act to halt the National Labor Relations Board from issuing decisions or rulings until the U.S. Supreme Court can rule on the NLRB’s legitimacy or nominees are properly confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The bill was drafted in an effort to rein in the labor relations chaos created when Obama’s ‘recess’ appointees to the National Labor Relations Board were found to be unconstitutionally appointed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Since the...

President Obama will elevate the controversy over his recess appointment powers to the highest level, with the National Labor Relations Board announcing Tuesday it will appeal to the Supreme Court a lower-court ruling that held his appointments to the board were illegal. That move will put the thorny case straight before the justices, who will have to decide whether Mr. Obama overstepped his constitutional powers when he did an end-run around Congress last year and named three board members — using his recess-appointment powers at a time when the Senate considered itself still in session. In January a three-judge panel...

It wasn't surprising that Big Labor Democrats would choose a labor union lawyer to present the White House talking points to justify his unconstitutional appointments of National Labor Relations Board members. However, when the labor concluded her opening remarks saying that congress having hearing regarding unconstitutional appointments made them shills for the 1%, she lost a lot of credibility. If she any credibility left after her opening statements, it was soon to be destroyed as were the White House talking points that she was shilling. Elizabeth Reynolds the lawyer from Allison, Slutsky & Kennedy was questioned by South Carolina Congressman...

In a provocative move, President Obama Wednesday re-nominated two controversial Democratic candidates to the National Labor Relations Board just weeks after a federal court invalided their recess appointments to the posts. Mr. Obama again nominated Sharon Block, a former Democratic Labor Department official, and Richard Griffin, a Democratic union lawyer, to serve on the NLRB

**SNIP** Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said the administration was forced to use recess appointments because of Republican intransigence. “In its frustration, this administration said ‘we were elected to govern,’” Durbin said. “And whether it’s the National Labor Relations Board or whatever they wanted to put people in place to govern.”

SENTELLE, Chief Judge: Noel Canning petitions for review of a National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB” or “the Board”)decision finding that Noel Canning violated section 8(a)(1) and (5) of the National Labor Relations Act . . .

In case you missed it... Finally a good day for America, it's been a while.

Sometimes, Barack Obama acts like the Constitution does not apply to him and the Congress is an imaginary being. Friday, the United States Court of Appeals brought the president back to Earth and reminded him that that the Constitution’s Appointments Clause and the U.S. Senate are very much part of reality by voiding three of Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. The D.C. Circuit ruled that the president could not end-run the confirmation process merely because at the beginning of 2012 the U.S. Senate was meeting every three business days in, what lawyers call, pro forma session....

A federal appeals court has overturned President Obama’s controversial recess appointments from last year, arguing he abused his powers and acted when the Senate was not actually in a recess. The three-judge panel’s ruling is a major blow to Mr. Obama. The judges ruled that the appointments Mr. Obama made to the National Labor Relations Board are illegal, and the board no longer has a quorum to operate. But the ruling has even broader constitutional significance, with the judges arguing that the president’s recess appointment powers don’t apply to “intrasession” appointments — those made when Congress has left town for...

A federal appeals court has overturned President Obama’s controversial recess appointments from last year, arguing he abused his powers and acted when the Senate was not actually in a recess. The three-judge panel’s ruling is a major blow to Mr. Obama. The judges ruled that the appointments Mr. Obama made to the National Labor Relations Board are illegal, and the board no longer has a quorum to operate. But the ruling has even broader constitutional significance, with the judges arguing that the president’s recess appointment powers don’t apply to “intrasession” appointments — those made when Congress has left town for...

President Obama exceeded his constitutional authority when he named three members of the National Labor Relations Board while the Senate was on a break last year, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that allowing the president to make such appointments as a way around Senate opposition “would wholly defeat the purpose of the Framers in the careful separation of powers structure” they created. The decision flatly rejected the administration’s rationale for appointing the board members, and jeopardizes the separate recess appointment of former Ohio attorney general...

White House press secretary Jay Carney on Friday blasted a court decision that nixed three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board as “novel and unprecedented,” but said that he did not expect any broader application of the ruling. “It’s one court, one case, one company,” Carney said. Carney said there has been “enormous frustration” at the White House with the Senate’s refusal to approve nominees. But the ruling Friday “contradicts 150 year of practice by Democratic and Republican administrations. … So we respectfully but strongly disagree with the ruling.” Carney declined to say if the administration planned to...

(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled today that if the word “the” in the U.S. Constitution carries its customary meaning—which the court forcefully affirmed it does—than President Barack Obama violated the Constitution and usurped power from Congress by appointing persons to federal office without securing the constitutionally required consent of the Senate. On Jan. 4, 2012, Obama unilaterally named three people to the National Labor Relations Board (NRLB). The Senate—by a unanimous agreement of all 100 senators—had said that it was in fact still in session that day and not in the recess....

A three judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today adopted arguments advanced by Landmark Legal Foundation to overturn appointments made by President Obama to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Landmark argued in its amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief that the President's use of the Constitution's "recess appointments" clause violated the restrictions placed by the Constitution on that power.

The National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) Summary of Operations for fiscal year 2012, released last week, shows an agency that is significantly over-funded. In 2010, the Obama Administration increased the agency’s budget even though it previously operated with a fiscal year-end surplus. Now, the operating report reveals that the agency’s business continues to erode with the decline of unionization in the private sector making its increased appropriation even more unnecessary than it was in 2010. According to the report, issued by Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon, total case intake decreased by three percent; unfair labor practice case intake decreased by...

Labor insiders expect a federal appeals court to rule in the near future on a landmark case challenging President Barack Obama’s controversial recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in December in Noel Canning v. NLRB. At issue is the legitimacy of three NLRB board members appointed by Obama while the Senate remained in pro-forma session in an attempt to block the president from making a recess appointments. Insiders expect the court to expedite the proceedings. “Given the importance of this case, the decision should come out in the next...

Christmas came early for Big Labor last week when the National Labor Relations Board handed down a pair of decisions that overturned longstanding precedent and will deliver a windfall to union finances. On Wednesday, the NLRB voted 3-to-1 to gut protections for workers who don't want their money spent on politics. In states without right-to-work laws, employees of unionized companies are coerced into paying dues as a condition of employment. But under the Supreme Court's 1988 Beck decision, workers are allowed to withhold the portion of their dues that unions spend on political activity. Unions must also maintain independently verified...

What does it mean for the Senate to be in recess? Today, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals was challenged to figure that out. This stems from President Obama bypassing the Senate in appointing three nominees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The Wall Street Journal sets it up: [I]n January Mr. Obama named three new members of the National Labor Relations Board along with Richard Cordray as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau when the Senate wasn't in recess. While Congress was conducting pro forma sessions, Mr. Obama pulled this end run around the Senate's advice...

Palermo Villa Inc. said Wednesday’s National Labor Relations Board decision on its labor dispute “vindicates” the company. Palermo properly followed immigration law in firing 75 workers earlier this year for not having proper documentation, the NLRB said Wednesday. The investigation into allegations of unfair labor practices against the Milwaukee pizza manufacturer found no evidence Palermo fired the workers in retaliation for union-organizing efforts, Irv Gottschalk, NLRB regional director in Milwaukee, told The Business Journal Wednesday.“It looks like they properly followed immigration procedures, but I’m no immigration expert,” Gottschalk said. “Under the (National Labor Relations Act) that I enforce, there’s no...

President Barack Obama's National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is considering a rule that would force private businesses to turn over their workers' personal information -- such as phone numbers, email addresses, and work schedules -- to union organizers. While this rule would be intended to make it easier for union bosses to organize workers at businesses that do not have a union presence, it would also have the unintended effect of making workers vulnerable to harassment. The Heritage Foundation’s James Sherk argued this will allow union organizers to bother workers even after the worker tells an organizer "no" by bombarding...

If authentic, CNN’s memo explaining why Candy Crowley permitted President Obama to speak four minutes more than Mitt Romney during Tuesday’s presidential debate is devastating to that network: On why Obama got more time to speak, it should be noted that Candy and her commission producers tried to keep it even but that Obama went on longer largely because he speaks more slowly. We’re going to do a word count to see whether, as in Denver, Romney actually got more words in even if he talked for a shorter period of time. One of Crowley’s main jobs as moderator was...

Under the Obama Administration, Big Labor has seized control of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) to drive its self-interested agenda – a truly unprecedented development in the history of the NLRB. In the past, Board law has changed when control moved from one political party to another. But never before has a Board majority conducted itself in such unprincipled partisan manner, ramming through an extremist agenda and dissembling about it. Three examples demonstrate the point: The NLRB stripped workers of their right to a secret ballot election to challenge their employer’s recognition of a union by card...

Republican senators on Wednesday joined a lawsuit arguing President Obama violated the Constitution when he used his recess appointment powers earlier this year to fill several controversial jobs. The move elevates the stakes in what has been a simmering constitutional battle. The senators, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have long argued the Senate was still in session, not in recess, when Mr. Obama made his move in January. They said the picks — to the National Labor Relations Board and to a top consumer advocacy post — are therefore illegal. “The Constitution empowers the Senate, not the president, to...

Phoenix—In a strong rebuke to the Obama Administration Wednesday, federal district court Judge Frederick J. Martone ruled that the Secret Ballot Amendment, which protects workers’ right to secret ballot in union-organizing elections, is constitutional. Drafted by the Goldwater Institute in 2009, the Save Our Secret Ballot amendment was added in 2010 to state constitutions in Arizona, South Dakota, South Carolina, and Utah, by voter majorities ranging from 60 to 86 percent. The constitutional amendment was sought after President Obama and congressional Democrats attempted to end the use of secret ballots in union-organizing elections and force workers into a system called...

Emigrant Bank was recently identified to receive a waiver that would allow the bank to opt out of rigorous Dodd-Frank requirements. These of course are the same new rules and regulations that Barack deems essential to the nation. Yet when the bank’s owner, Howard Milstein, who is a close friend and was a bundler for President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, protested that the new rules would seriously crimp operations of his bank, the Obama Administration worked with members of congress to grant him a waiver from the new rules. Other financial institutions and banks have consistently and vehemently argued that...

The rap sheet for members of the International Union of Operating Engineers reads like something out of "Goodfellas." Embezzlement. Wire fraud. Bribery. That's just scratching the surface of crimes committed by the IUOE ranks. And it is from this union that President Obama earlier this year picked one of his latest appointees to the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency tasked with resolving labor disputes between unions and management. That recess appointee, Richard Griffin, was former general counsel for the 400,000-member union of heavy equipment operators -- a union tainted over the years by mob connections and a history...

Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker said the federal government needs to “reign in” the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because they have “run amok,” in remarks at a Jobs Summit hosted by the Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday. "[W]e need to reign in, particularly two key areas, the National Labor Relations Board and the EPA so that our employers have certainty as to know exactly what’s going to happen in the future in those two critical areas,” Walker said during a press conference at the event.

“If I had a world of my own … [n]othing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn’t,” said Alice in Alice in Wonderland. Well, so it is at President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The board is making sea-changes in law and procedure, but it characterizes them merely as “modest” and “routine.” Consider three cases in point – the Boeing complaint, the “ambush election” rule and Specialty Healthcare or micro-union decision – in which the board made radical departures from past policy and described them not by what they are but by what they...

The Democrats have picked a curious and potentially very costly fight this election year. President Obama came into office promising Big Labor that its agenda is his agenda, and he wasted little time using the National Labor Relations Board to make good on that promise. That board is supposed to be a fair arbiter of labor disputes, but the president packed the NLRB with Big Labor activists, and the board tried to ram a union-favoring “ambush rule” through to implementation. The rule would slash the amount of time employees and employers have to consider unionization in non-unionized work places from...

For just over a year now and since the failure of the Employee ‘Forced’ Choice Act (EFCA) to receive a vote in the 111th Congress, union bosses have been desperate to obtain the “payback” they believe is owed to them. Big Labor is beside itself that its membership numbers continue to dwindle despite giving half a billion dollars in campaign contributions to President Obama and Congressional Democrats. In the absence of employees voluntarily choosing to join unions, labor bosses have decided to force them into collective bargaining units in an effort to line their own pockets. More than a year...

A federal judge on Monday struck down new regulations governing union elections, saying the National Labor Relations Board did not follow proper voting procedures when it approved the rules last year. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said the board never had a quorum when it voted on the rules that speed up the pace of union representation elections. He did not address the merits of the rules and said the NLRB could simply take a new vote to approve them. Business groups and Republicans had vigorously challenged the rules, which took effect April 30, claiming they didn't give company managers...

Labor unions, like the United Nations, are all too often judged by what they are envisioned as being — not by what they actually are or what they actually do. Many people, who do not look beyond the vision or the rhetoric to the reality, still think of labor unions as protectors of working people from their employers. And union bosses still employ that kind of rhetoric. However, someone once said, "When I speak I put on a mask, but when I act I must take it off." That mask has been coming off, more and more, especially during...

A proposal from the Obama administration to prevent children from doing farm chores has drawn plenty of criticism from rural-district members of Congress. But now it’s attracting barbs from farm kids themselves. The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child-labor laws to children working on family farms, prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families’ land. Under the rules, children under 18 could no longer work “in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials.”

A proposal from the Obama administration to prevent children from doing farm chores has drawn plenty of criticism from rural-district members of Congress. But now it’s attracting barbs from farm kids themselves. The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child-labor laws to children working on family farms, prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families’ land. Under the rules, children under 18 could no longer work “in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials.” “Prohibited places of employment,” a Department press release read,...

Complete title: Consumer Protection Financial Bureau Director Richard Cordray Doubted Constitutionality of His Own Appointment, Documents Uncovered by Judicial Watch Show “There is a chance…that the appointment would be invalidated by a court.” Cordray Told Staff His Short Stint “should give to each one of us…a fierce urgency to accomplish the work we are doing together.” (Washington, DC) –Judicial Watch, the organization that investigates and fights government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that indicate the agency’s director, Richard Cordray, doubted the constitutionality of his own appointment. On January 4, 2012,...

Senate Republicans on Tuesday turned to Miguel Estrada, a man whom Democrats denied a presidential appointment in 2003, to be their lawyer as they fight to overturn some of President Obama’s own appointments. The move escalates the simmering constitutional battle between the Congress and the White House over several appointments Mr. Obama made in January, when the Senate was still meeting every few days and considered itself in session. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, said he and his colleagues are filing friend-of-the-court briefs in an ongoing challenge to Mr. Obama’s appointments, and said Mr. Estrada will be their...

A federal court on Tuesday blocked the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from issuing a rule that would require employers to post notices explaining workers’ collective bargaining rights. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ordered that an emergency injunction on the rule be granted, pending appeal. The poster rule was set to go into effect on April 30, but will now be delayed until the appeal is decided. The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace asked for the injunction after U.S. District Judge Amy Berman dismissed their legal...

A federal judge ruled Friday that the National Labor Relations Board cannot require millions of private employers to put up posters informing workers of their right to form a union. U.S. District Judge David Norton in South Carolina said the labor board exceeded congressional authority when it approved the poster requirement last year.The decision Friday conflicts with a ruling last month by another federal judge in Washington, D.C., who found the posters were a reasonable means to make workers aware of collective bargaining rights.Both lawsuits were brought business groups that claim the posters are too one-sided in favor of unions....

Today there is no American news outlet factually covering the illegal actions of the sitting President of the United States in context. Nor is there one consistently exposing the laws his administration has flagrantly broken, though this corruption now demonstrably permeates every level of the federal system. Attorneys General Tom Horne, Arizona; Pam Bondi, Florida; Sam Olens, Georgia; Bill Schuette, Michigan; Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma; Marty Jackley, South Dakota; Alan Wilson, South Carolina; Greg Abbott, Texas; and Ken Cuccinelli of Virginia produced a joint memo on March 5th, 2012 detailing 21 blatant violations of law committed by the Obama administration. By...

A federal judge appointed by President Obama has upheld the National Labor Relation Board's power to enforce its ...

Obama’s National Labor Relations Board announced its new Excelsior List, which will continue their assault on the 93% of private-sector employees who are union-free. Now all employees who are targeted for unionization will be forced to turn over their home telephone number and e-mail addresses to unions. This will give union organizers the ability to conduct intrusive home visits prior to the NLRB election.