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Debra Saunders says the president doesn’t work well with others.
President Obama is running for re-election with an unusual pitch: He can’t work with others.
He only gets along with yes-men. “I refuse to take no for an answer,” Obama said Wednesday of his decision to make a “recess” appointment that placed Richard Cordray as head of a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Constitution, of course, gives the president the power to make appointments during Senate recesses. Technically, however, the Senate was in session. The imperial president bypassed Senate rules and years of precedent, because he wouldn’t or couldn’t cut a deal.
Later Wednesday, the White House announced three more recess appointments for vacant seats on the National Labor Relations Board. Obama explained: “When Congress refuses to act, and as a result, hurts our economy and puts our people at risk, then I have an obligation as president to do what I can without them.”
Obama, a former constitutional law professor, just kicked the Constitution’s delicate balance of powers by using the executive boot to step on the Senate’s power to advise and consent.
I understand the president’s frustration with the system. In December, 53 senators voted in Cordray’s favor, but under Senate rules, 60 votes are needed to bring his confirmation to an up-or-down floor vote. (Republican senators don’t have a problem with Cordray, per se. They used his nomination in an attempt to roll back some of the regulatory powers and increase congressional oversight of the new consumer bureau, created in the Dodd-Frank law.)
The 60-vote threshold may not seem fair. But in his 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama wrote, “To me, the threat to eliminate the filibuster on judicial nominations was just one more example of the Republicans changing the rules in the middle of the game.” He was angry at Republicans for thinking about flouting precedent.
Obama, however, didn’t seem to mind when Democrats changed the rules during George W. Bush’s presidency. On Nov. 16, 2007, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the Senate would hold pro forma sessions – that could involve little more than gavel rattling – during the Thanksgiving holiday “to prevent recess appointments.” …
Interesting historical comparison from John Steele Gordon.
I agree with Pete and Alana–and many others around the blogosphere–that Obama’s mini-Putsch two days ago was both lawless and typical of this administration. Obama only cares about his re-election at this point, and if that requires the Constitution to be trashed in the process, well, so be it.
As Alana pointed out, Charles Krauthammer thinks it might be clever politics, however cynical, because the president is arguing he has to get things done and it’s all the Senate’s fault for being obstructionist. I’m not so sure. The American people take the Constitution seriously and have a limited tolerance for politicians who try to evade it for political purposes. FDR, just off a triumphant re-election (46 of 48 states), tried in 1937 to “pack” the Supreme Court that had been obstructing his programs by adding an extra justice for every justice over 70 years of age. That would have been perfectly constitutional, as Congress has the power to set the number of justices. (There were originally six, and there were 10 after 1863. The number has been fixed at nine since 1869.) But the people would have none of it, and Congress, responding to public opinion, refused to act. It was a devastating political defeat for FDR. …
American.com notes the demise of another anti-fracking study.
Opponents of “fracking,” the use of hydraulic fracturing technology to liberate natural gas from shale formations (among other things) are desperate to tar the new technology before free-energy markets can undermine the green-power revolution with abundant flows of affordable natural gas.
Most recently, some Cornell researchers made the claim that gas produced by fracking would cause more climate change than would the continued use of coal:
Compared to coal, the footprint of shale gas is at least 20% greater and perhaps more than twice as great on the 20-year horizon and is comparable when compared over 100 years.
Apparently, they had to go to some great, and completely unrealistic, lengths to manufacture this conclusion, as a commentary points out in Climatic Change (emphasis mine):
High leakage rates, a short methane GWP [Global Warming Potential], and comparison in terms of heat content are the inappropriate bases upon which Howarth et al. ground their claim that gas could be twice as bad as coal in its greenhouse impact. Using more reasonable leakage rates and bases of comparison, shale gas has a GHG footprint that is half and perhaps a third that of coal.
The anti-frackers will keep trying though—they have little choice. Cheap, abundant natural gas could undercut their ability to drive the energy policy agenda (not to mention transportation policy, housing policy, industrial policy, etc.) by simultaneously pushing coal out of the market, cleaning the air, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And all without a grand government-driven energy policy. Imagine that.
A peek into the coming turmoil in the legal profession can be gleaned from a post from Inside The Law School Scam Blog. This post is a reaction to the head of the ABA expressing little concern over the lack of jobs for recent law grads.
… You really couldn’t ask for a better illustration of how untethered our profession’s powers that be have gotten from basic social and economic reality. Does Robinson actually think that, under present conditions and into the foreseeable future, an annual tuition of $25,000 would make the average law school a good deal? Is he aware that this number is 70% higher, in real, inflation-adjusted dollars, than what the average private law school cost 25 years ago? Does he understand that a $25,000 annual tuition translates into an average of $80,000 of law school debt for students who attend such institutions? Does he have any idea how many current law graduates have career prospects that justify taking on that amount of high-interest non-dischargeable debt?
These are not “complex questions.” A complex question is whether you’d rather have Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady as your quarterback with the score tied in the fourth quarter, or whether the universe is ultimately a meaningless void, or whether Beggars Banquet is a better album than Abbey Road. A simple question is whether the current cost of legal education is justified by the likely return on investment it produces.
So here’s to you, Mr. Robinson. You’ve provided a perfect illustration of why Congress needs to take a regulatory flamethrower to your clueless organization, at least to the extent it continues to enable a system of professional accreditation that has degenerated into the smuggest and slackest of cartels — one which benefits law schools, while doing serious damage to lawyers, law students, and, not least, the public at large, which will be picking up the tab for all the selfishness and stupidity that fuels this system.
Slate pays tribute to a new U. S. map.
… American mapmaking’s most prestigious honor is the “Best of Show” award at the annual competition of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society. The five most recent winners were all maps designed by large, well-known institutions: National Geographic (three times), the Central Intelligence Agency Cartography Center, and the U.S. Census Bureau. But earlier this year, the 38th annual Best of Show award went to a map created by Imus Geographics—which is basically one dude named David Imus working in a farmhouse outside Eugene, Ore.
At first glance, Imus’ “The Essential Geography of the United States of America” may look like any other U.S. wall map. It’s about 4 feet by 3 feet. It uses a standard, two-dimensional conic projection. It has place names. Political boundaries. Lakes, rivers, highways.
So what makes this map different from the Rand McNally version you can buy at a bookstore? Or from the dusty National Geographic pull-down mounted in your child’s elementary school classroom? Can one paper wall map really outshine all others—so definitively that it becomes award-worthy?
I’m here to tell you it can. This is a masterful map. And the secret is in its careful attention to design. …