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Bowing to an ultimatum, Senate Republicans agreed Tuesday to drop objections to key Obama administration nominees, delivering a victory to Senate Democrats who said they will shelve — for now — their own plans to change the rules and curtail filibusters. The last-minute deal, announced just before the Senate was slated to hold a critical test vote, still leaves Democrats able to employ the so-called “nuclear option” and change the filibuster rules later this year if they think Republicans are obstructing appointments unfairly. Republicans said they got President Obama to withdraw two controversial nominees to the National Labor Relations Board,...

In 2005, then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened to end the filibuster for judicial appointments by forcing a mid-session rule change on a majority vote, an act that would have ended two centuries of precedent. Before he could act, though, the Gang of 14 arose, led by Republican John McCain, to preserve the senatorial tradition, brokering a deal that left conservatives fuming by depriving Frist of his partisan majority. Eight years later, with Harry Reid threatening to take the same action on executive-branch appointments, where is that Old Gang of Ours? According to NBC, at least McCain might be riding...

In the courts of law and public opinion, congressional Republicans increasingly accuse President Barack Obama of exceeding his constitutional authority for the benefit of special interests, most recently by delaying a requirement for businesses to provide health care for their workers. In one instance, Senate Republicans formally backed a lawsuit challenging the president’s appointment of three members of the National Labor Relations Board without confirmation. The Supreme Court has agreed to review a ruling in the case, which found that Obama overstepped his bounds. Most recently, the White House’s decision to postpone a key part of the president's health care...

Cablevision has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in an investigation by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) about complaints involving 22 former workers that were allegedly wrongfully terminated. This battle between the media giant and the Communications Workers of America is hardly new information as they have been fighting for the past year, but this most recent move is telling specifically because of what it implies about the authority of the NLRB. A different case, National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, a court is considering the idea that the NLRB’s members, or at least 3 of them,...

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.