Pierce writes: "It is not much of an exaggeration to say that, while the rest of the country's political class remains fascinated by the Passion Of Big Chicken, the future of the entire Obama presidency today is hanging fire before the United States Supreme Court."
The Supreme Court. (photo: Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images)
14 January 14
t is not much of an exaggeration to say that, while the rest of the country's political class remains fascinated by the Passion Of Big Chicken, the future of the entire Obama presidency today is hanging fire before the United States Supreme Court. Only real SCOTUS wonks saw this one coming but, should the court decide in favor of the plaintiff in National Labor Relations Board v. Canning, there simply will not be much left for Barack Obama to do in office except greet NCAA championship teams and drone people to death in Waziristan.
At issue in the case is the president's power to make recess appointments to various executive branch positions. Frustrated by the fact that he has an opposition party that is a) dedicated to nullifying wholly the results of the 2008 and 2012 presidential election, and b) insane, the president resorted to recess appointments in order to staff his government, as other presidents have before him. Republicans in the legislature then argued that the recess appointments were constitutionally illegitimate because they were holding kabuki "sessions" of the legislature and that, therefore, there was no recess at all. Three of the appointments in question were to the National Labor Relations Board, which could not function with three positions empty, which was rather the obvious point of blocking them. The full NLRB then ruled against the canning division of the Noel Company in a contract dispute. The company challenged the ruling on the grounds that three of the commissioners held their office illegitimately. Spectacularly, but unsurprisingly, the company got the D.C. Court of Appeals to agree, and up to the nine wise souls the case went.
Bear in mind. The D.C. Court overruled over a century of settled practice within the government. The opinion was written by Judge David Sentelle, whose long career as a political hack stretches back to the 1980s, when he helped confound the investigation into the Iran-Contra scandal. (Sentelle believes all financial regulation to be unconstitutional, which must keep him in dinners, anyway.) In fact, to call Sentelle a hack is to insult most of the people who worked for Huey Long. This is an attempt to create a legal exception through which this president will not be allowed to govern effectively. If Sentelle's hackery is upheld, the ramifications are enormous. Among the president's other recess appointments is Richard Cordray at the Consumer Finance Protection Board. If the ruling goes against the administration, and Cordray's appointment is declared illegitimate, then the CFPB may go down as well. Which is, of course, rather the point of the whole exercise. And you would not be remiss if you were to recall that this president is the only one in 50 years who has not been allowed to fill seats on the very court that launched this whole mess -- the D.C. Court of Appeals. Which is, of course, rather the point.
