With the news today that John "the moustache"Bolton is resigning, there also is much better news for the future. Robert"douchebag of liberty" Novak has the scoop.
Sen. Harry Reid, leading the Senate's new Democratic majority, is framing next year's schedule in a way that will make it difficult, if not impossible, for President Bush to give recess appointments to nominees blocked for confirmation. Reid's schedule limits Senate recesses to one week. Recess appointments usually are made only when Congress has been out of session for at least 10 days. That may kill any consideration of trying to seat federal appeals court judges whose nominations had been stalled even in the Republican-controlled Senate. The downside may be a rebellion by senators if their breaks are held to one week.
First, this is a brilliant move on Reid's part. Bush will not be able to do squat with controversial poison pill appointees like Bolton, with the Senate never out of schedule for 10 days or longer. Secondly, any democratic Senator who bitches and moans about only 1 week out of the chamber needs to shut up now and not even start.
Not only does this mean that Bush is thwarted, and bitch slapped, and suppressed in such a clever way, it also means more days in session, which means more investigations, more time to determine what bad deeds need to not go unpunished. The "do nothing congress" will be replaced at least by a congress that is actually there. Perhaps since they will be sitting around with nothing to do on some days, they might out of boredom decide to hold some extra hearings. Those whacked out judges Bush wants to put on the bench, during recesses, say hello to Chairman Leahy.
Harry Reid is to be so commended on this action. It really works in so many ways. There will be a group of people trying to fight this however and we should keep Reid's back on this. This group possibly includes Bayh, Clinton, Obama, Kerry, McCain. They would probably rather have the Senate out of session as much as possible because when will they have time to do fund raisers if they are actually working? Tough noogies. The American people spoke, Harry Reid is delivering on the promise to make congress work well, and well actually work for a change.
Huzzah!