Does this mean that Barack is prohibited from making a recess appointment during the 23 days or however many days, he remains in office, before the new POTUS is sworn-in along with the newly elected Senate, which may or may not be a GOP majority?
According to the Constitution, the President can make appointments of ALL officials when the Senate is in recess.
The fix to that is simply not to go into recess.
If they truly want to oppose President Obama from placing a liberal to very liberal to totally whacked-out Leftist on the Supreme Court—to replace a well-known conservative, they have every right to do so, and the Constitution provides them with the tools to do so.
They can chose whether to go on recess—or not—anytime a majority so decides.
Right now, the majority is nominally* Republican. If they stick together, then they can effectively stop this president from making a non-conservative appointment.
* Nominally—and I think we have to watch McCain, Kirk, Collins, Heller, Hatch, Cronyn, Graham and Murkowski. They’re all either Liberals or bending over backwards to get along and not get a press beat-down.
The way I hear it he can do a recess appointment anytime Congress is in recess I think I may be in recess right now not sure
The Constitution set the date for Congress to convene - Article 1, Section 4, Clause 2 originally set that date for the third day of December. The Twentieth Amendment, however, changed the opening date for sessions to noon on the third day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.
This article from Wikipedia also talks about the current Senators' terms expiring January 3, 2017. (This is what is known as the 3rd Class of Senators. Maybe not flattering, but I will leave it to the reader to decide how accurate. It has to do with the staggered terms of the Senate, not a prediction of how these guys would do back when the system was set up.)