Bush's 41-Second F.U. To The United States

     Back on January 4,2006 Bush did another one of his " screw America " jobs by appointing 17 of his friends to posts in the Federal Election Commission, National Labor Relations Board, and a few other federal offices. It would appear that since he couldn't get them confirmed by the Senate, he waited for a congressional recess so that he could just bypass the confirmation process. Keep in mind that this was a Republican controlled Senate at the time and even they didn't like his choices for these positions.

   As Nick Burt over at In These Times has pointed out, this would be just more cronyism of the part of Bush. So what's new, right?

The recess appointments avoided floor fights over dubiously credentialed nominees, including a former oil executive, a former president of a weapons manufacturer and a relative of a cabinet employee. All told, they include eight donors to Bush’s presidential campaigns.   

Two of the appointees are 2004 Bush-Cheney Campaign “Rangers,” supporters who are being rewarded for having “bundled” at least $200,000 in $2,000 contributions from individuals. Among the 221 Rangers were Roger Wallace, who was named to the Board of Directors of the Inter-American Foundation, and Stephen Goldsmith, who now sits on the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service.       MORE

  This is a pretty loyal group of " bushies " in which nine of the seventeen have contributed $440,585 to either Bush or the GOP.

   These appointments were made by Bush between sessions of Congress in order to have them around for a longer period of time. Many thought that these hoods would be gone in January 2007 with the new Congress coming in, but that ain't so.

If the President makes a recess appointment between sessions or between Congresses, that appointment will expire at the end of the following session. 

If he makes the appointment during a recess in the middle of a session, that appointment also will expire at the end of the following session. In this case, the duration of the appointment will include the balance of the session in progress plus the full length of the session that follows.

   As is noted at the Daily Kos:

The Senate calendar on the Democratic site shows no meeting until Congress opened on January 18, 2006, which would lead one to assume that date marked the opening of the second year of the 109th Congress. But the Library of Congress indicates a session was held on January 3, 2006, thus officially opening the 109th. And lo and behold, the Daily Digest reports a 41-second pro forma Senate session, from 12:00:04 PM to 12:00:45 P.M., on that date. The Senate convened, immediately adjourned and thus began a "recess in the middle of the session," not meeting again until January 18, 2006.

The day following the less-than-a-minute convening, of course, Bush made his recess appointments—now officially during a session of Congress—which allowed his eminently rejectable appointees to complete the "balance of the session in progress plus the full length of the session that follows."

  So Bush and the rest of his criminal enterprise snuck in a 41 second session of Congress just so that he could appoint these inept fools and keep them around for a few years instead of a few months.

   Yet, we still have House Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid saying that they have more important things to do other than impeaching Cheney and Bush. They might as well start working on impeachment since they aren't doing a whole hell of a lot about getting our troops out of Iraq.

 

Tags: George Bush Senate recess appointments Julie Myers Federal Election Commission National Labor Relations Board,