OH PISS BOY!
YOU LOOK LIKE THE PISS BOY!
Posted on 01/11/2002 9:22:28 AM PST by HOYA97
Circumventing Senate opposition, President Bush signs recess appointments for Otto Reich and Eugene Scalia, The Associated Press has learned.
Hey dass-hole, stick it!
Howlin, I like the way you think...
If they can't take a joke, "F"em.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Circumventing Senate opposition, President Bush signed recess appointments Friday for conservatives Otto Reich and Eugene Scalia.A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the White House gave Congress formal notification of the long-threatened appointments early Friday afternoon.
By exercising his executive authority while Congress is in recess, Reich and Scalia will be allowed to serve until Congress recesses again at the end of the year, the official said.
Bush named Reich assistant secretary of state for Latin America, the top diplomatic post for the region that Bush made his primary foreign relations priority before the war on terrorism consumed his first year in office.
Scalia, the son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, now assumes the post of Labor Department solicitor, for which Bush nominated him several months ago.
Scalia's nomination was opposed by organized labor, in part for his opposition to Clinton-era rules aimed at reducing workplace injuries. Scalia criticized the rule as "quackery" based on "junk science."
Outspoken and ideologically conservative, Scalia becomes the Labor Department's top lawyer in charge of enforcing federal labor laws and worker protections.
Top presidential appointments are subject to Senate confirmation, but the Senate adjourned last month until Jan. 23 without taking up either Scalia's or Reich's nominations.
The Constitution gives the president the power during Senate recesses to install nominees, without Senate approval, until the end of the next session of Congress.
The Democratic-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee refused to give Reich a hearing, mostly because of opposition from Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.
Dodd and his allies consider Reich, a Cuban-American with close ties to conservative anti-Castro Cubans, to be unqualified for the post.
Dodd has said that Reich lacks bipartisan support.
But Secretary of State Colin Powell called Reich, a former ambassador to Venezuela, the most important among the State Department's unconfirmed nominees.
"He has done nothing - nothing at all - in his career in government that should be seen as disqualifying for this job," Powell said recently.
The Democrats' concerns over Reich focus on his lobbying activities as well as his leadership of the State Department's one-time Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean. The office - which Reich led from its inception in June 1983 until January 1986 - was accused of running an illegal, covert domestic propaganda effort against Nicaragua's Sandinista government and in favor of the Contra rebels.
Reich has denied any wrongdoing.
No! Bush won't, and shouldn't, lower himself to the level of presstitutes and Sinators. Ari, or maybe even some undersecretary of something, will be pefectly able to make this case.
The kind of thing Bush might do, if there is a stink made about recess appointments, is to let the egoists in the media and congress jabber, piss 'n moan, and issue some ugly, blatantly partisan attacks on him for awhile, after which he will give a speech (maybe even in the State of the Union) about the importance to all Americans of a Judiciary, and important Federal offices, that are adequately staffed, and so on. He will not respond directly to the attacks on him, but his indirect response will serve to turn the attacks from his critics back on themselves. This is how he outmanuevered and thorougly trounced Daschle (striping away much of his support among Senate Democrats) in the last week.
This is also, in a more general sense, how he made "alpha male" gore look like a complete buffon in that debate where al got in Dubya's face. It's much more effect to create conditions (and contrasts) where people will see for themselves the faults of your opponents than to explicitly list those faults. Bush is a master at this.
Tee-hee......and whine they will. Gosh, I love George Bush.
No, actually the U.S. Constitution justifies the means. The Constitution allows for recess appointments. The intent was for situations where the Senate was unable to review the appointment for confirmation before the end of the session (the Framers of the Constitution probably did not envision a senate of unstatemanly types that would refuse to allow a vote on appointees). Since these appointees were not allowed a review during the session, the recess appointment is the Constitutionally appropriate way to allow them to do the job they were chosen to do. Now if GWB were to use a recess appointment to install someone who had been reviewed and rejected in accordance with the Constitution, then I would be vocal in my criticism of him for doing so. But that is not within his honorable character to do such a thing.
OH PISS BOY!
YOU LOOK LIKE THE PISS BOY!
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