Originally Posted By skinnerbox It's bad enough that the conservative noise machine keeps claiming that Obama is weak on immigration, when he's deported far more undocumented residents in his first three years than W did in his entire 8-year term. (As of Sept 12 last year, Obama had deported 1.06 million compared to 1.57 million during Bush's 8 years in office): <a href="http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/09/its-official-obama-has-deported-more-million-unauthorized-immigrants" target="_blank">http://motherjones.com/mojo/20...migrants</a> Now, the same conservative noise machine is accusing Obama of 'overreaching' his Presidential authority by the recess appointment of Richard Cordray as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, even though he's rarely used recess appointments compared to other Presidents: <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/01/04/397589/president-obama-has-made-far-fewer-recess-appointments-than-any-recent-president/" target="_blank">http://thinkprogress.org/justi...esident/</a> <> Despite the inevitable conservative complaints that President Obama is engaged in some kind of massive overreach by recess appointing Richard Cordray as the nation’s chief consumer financial protection watchdog, the truth is that Obama has used his recess appointment power very sparingly. After today’s appointment, President Obama will have made a total of 29 recess appointments. By comparison, George W. Bush made 171 recess appointments; Bill Clinton made 139 recess appointments; George H.W. Bush made 77 recess appointments; and Ronald Reagan made 243. When you divide these numbers by the number of years each man spent in the White House, it reveals that Obama is far and away the least likely president to invoke this power <> If you're going to hate on Obama, at least do it for FACTUAL reasons, not the ones you Republicans keep imagining or pulling out of your butts.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Well, what they're claiming is that Congress is not technically in recess; they've been "pro forma" precisely to keep Obama from making any recess appointments. From Bloomberg news: "The Constitution gives a president the power to make appointments when the U.S. Senate is in recess. To keep Obama from appointing officials after Congress started a holiday break last month, congressional Republicans refused to adopt a resolution to formally adjourn and senators have appeared every three days for a brief pro forma session. The Congressional Research Service, in a 2001 memo, said congressional practice and Justice Department opinions have backed the position that the Senate should be out of session for more than three days before the president can make a so-called recess appointment. The White House discussions center on whether to challenge that customary practice and go ahead with an appointment while most lawmakers are out of town, despite the Senate’s pro forma gathering. Enough questions surround the way congressional recesses work to give the Obama administration some grounds to attempt a legal fight, said Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “The fact is that there is significant ambiguity about how you define a recess that they could challenge it,” Ornstein said." In other words, to prevent Obama from appointing Cordray (or anyone else), the senate GOP have been playing this game where, even though almost all of them are indeed out of town and the senate is doing NO business, a couple of them come in every 3 days so that they're not "officially" adjourned. And then they accuse Obama of "overreaching his authority" or "not respecting the Constitution and grabbing more power than any President in the history of our republic!!" To be fair, Democrats played this game at times to deny Bush some appointments. But as with the filibuster, it was used far more sparingly; not to block every dang thing the man wanted to do. And yes, of course, Republicans complained about the tactic then and called it bogus.
Originally Posted By Donny I think the GOP got it right. <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903596904576516653574988550.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_3" target="_blank">http://online.wsj.com/article/...S_News_3</a>
Originally Posted By Labuda Yeah, but he's still deported MANY more than Bush did while he was in office. <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/12/obamas-record-high-deportations-draw-hispanic-scorn/" target="_blank">http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/po...c-scorn/</a>
Originally Posted By Dabob2 "I think the GOP got it right." Knock me over with a feather. The linked article has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Get another feather.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder "I think the GOP got it right." Of course you do. A box of rocks never gets anything right.
