It’s Thursday, January 5th, 2011….and here’s The Gouge!

First up, remember the Left’s ceaseless carping about Bush Imperious?  As the WSJ details, George II was Little Lord Fauntleroy compared to the increasingly despotic Obamus Rex:

Contempt for Congress

Obama makes recess appointments when there’s no recess.

“DOING THINGS ON MY OWN IS VERY TEMPTING”

Remember those terrible days of the Imperial Presidency, when George W. Bush made several “recess appointments” to overcome Senate opposition? Well, Czar George II never did attempt what President Obama did yesterday in making recess appointments when Congress isn’t even on recess.

Eager to pick a fight with Congress as part of his re-election campaign, Mr. Obama did the Constitutional equivalent of sticking a thumb in its eye and hitting below the belt. He installed Richard Cordray as the first chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and named three new members to the National Labor Relations Board. He did so even though the Senate was in pro forma session after the new Congress convened this week.

A President has the power to make a recess appointment, and we’ve supported Mr. Obama’s right to do so. The Constitutional catch is that Congress must be in recess.

The last clause of Section 5 of Article 1 of the Constitution says that “Neither House” of Congress can adjourn for more than three days “without the Consent of the other” house. In this case, the House of Representatives had not formally consented to Senate adjournment. It’s true the House did this to block the President from making recess appointments, but it is following the Constitution in doing so. Let’s hear Mr. Obama’s legal justification.

Democrats had used a similar process to try to thwart Mr. Bush’s recess appointments late in his term when they controlled both the House and the Senate. Prodded by West Virginia’s Robert C. Byrd, who has since died, Majority Leader Harry Reid kept the Senate in pro forma session. Some advisers urged Mr. Bush to ignore the Senate and make recess appointments anyway, but he declined. Now Mr. Reid is supporting Mr. Obama’s decision to make an end run around a Senate practice that he pioneered. (And such hypocrisy should come as a….surprise?!?)

Some lawyers we respect argue that a pro forma session isn’t a real Congressional session, and that’s certainly worth debating. But that isn’t the view that Mr. Reid or then-Senator Obama took in 2007-08, and it would certainly be an extension of Presidential power for the chief executive to be able to tell Congress that he can decide when Congress is really sitting and when it isn’t. In any event, that still wouldn’t explain the violation of the language in Section 5 above.

These appointments are brazen enough that they have the smell of a deliberate, and politically motivated, provocation. Recall the stories over the New Year’s weekend, clearly planted by the White House, that Mr. Obama planned to make a campaign against Congress the core of his re-election drive. One way to do that is to run roughshod over the Senate’s advice and consent power and dare the Members to stop him.

Mr. Cordray’s appointment also plays into Mr. Obama’s plan to run against bankers and other plutocrats. The President justified his appointment yesterday by saying that Senate Republicans had blocked Mr. Cordray’s nomination “because they don’t agree with the law setting up the consumer watchdog.”

Yet he knows that Senate Republicans haven’t called for the dissolution of the consumer financial bureau, or personally attacked Mr. Cordray, as Democrats like to claim. Republicans have said they’d be happy to confirm him if Mr. Obama agrees to reforms of the bureau that would make it more accountable to elected officials and subject to Congressional appropriations. As it stands, the bureau is part of the Federal Reserve but Mr. Cordray sets his own budget and doesn’t report to the Fed Chairman. His rule-makings also don’t need to worry about such inconvenient details as bank safety and soundness.

The bureau has been up and running since July and is already pushing the boundaries of its examination powers. With Mr. Cordray on board, he says the bureau can now begin to issue rules, including oversight of nonbank institutions and the ability to define what constitutes an “abusive” act or practice, an invention of the Dodd-Frank financial reform that will surely lead to mischief.

As Ohio Attorney General, Mr. Cordray was tight with the tort bar and launched a barrage of national lawsuits worthy of Eliot Spitzer. His new job might be a nice populist springboard for running for Ohio Governor, should he choose to do so. Look for Mr. Cordray to announce new and controversial rules or enforcement actions, oh, say, around Labor Day.

As for Mr. Obama’s three NLRB appointees, he only notified Congress of his intent to nominate them on December 15. The Senate hasn’t had time to hold a single confirmation hearing. The nominees, two Democrats and one Republican, will give the labor board a quorum that it wouldn’t have had with the December 31 expiration of the term of previous recess-appointee Craig Becker.

Under this Administration, the supposedly nonpartisan NLRB has become a partisan arm of Big Labor, and that will probably continue this election year. Appointee Sharon Block is the Labor Department’s Congressional liaison and former aide to Ted Kennedy. Richard Griffin is general counsel for the International Union of Operating Engineers.

Remember a year ago when Mr. Obama was talking about “regulatory relief” and moving toward the political center? He even sent us an op-ed.

Congress can’t do much immediately to stop these appointments, but it ought to think creatively about how to fight back using its other powers—especially the power of the purse. However, private parties will have standing to sue if they are affected by one of Mr. Cordray’s rule-makings, and that’s when the courts may get a say on Mr. Obama’s contempt for Congress.

All of which makes deposing B. Hussein any right-thinking American’s ONLY imperative!  Our children’s children’s children will still be footing the bill The Obamao’s run up in only three years; given a second Tick-Tock term, they, like we, will have no future whatsoever. 

In a related item forwarded by Jeff Foutch, Investors.com offers another in a long line of inexplicable inconsistencies which have marked this Adminstration:

Defend Mideast Oil, But Refuse To Build Keystone?

Energy Independence: As our enemy Iran threatens to close a vital waterway for the shipping of oil, plans for a secure, job-creating supply from our ally Canada gather dust on the president’s desk.

The blustering threat from the quite mad Iranian mullahs and their supremely mad leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, may be just a bluff, but then again it might not. It may just be an attempt to intimidate and poke the eye of an American president perceived as weak and whose failure to support and exploit the “Iranian Spring” of 2009 may come back to bite us.

These are not completely empty threats, however. They come at a time when the economies of the U.S. and Europe are faltering, and from a regime concerned that its work on nuclear weapons and the missiles to carry them might be threatened. Iran sees an American president who has abandoned both Israel and Iraq to their own devices. (Which brings to mind our thoughts yesterday regarding miscalculation in reaction to amateurish foreign policy as the most likely cause for an Iranian mistep.) 

In a show of force, the John C. Stennis carrier battle group sailed through the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, halfway through Iran’s 10-day war game exercise in the region, and arrived following a warning from the Bahrain-based U.S. 5th Fleet’s spokeswoman that any disruption “will not be tolerated.”

The economic impact of the West’s being denied, even temporarily, the oil that passes through the Strait of Hormuz would be significant.

We find it more than passing strange that while we ponder an armed conflict to keep this economic lifeline open, we deny ourselves our own secure energy riches and that of our friend and ally to the north, Canada.

President Obama has said we must wean ourselves from foreign oil and the energy sources of the past. Yet as energy prices rise and job numbers fall, he must address the needs, and the threats, of the present. The Keystone XL pipeline, parts of which have already been built, would bring Alberta oil to Gulf Coast refineries.

It could also transport oil extracted from the oil-rich shale formations of the Rocky Mountain West, bringing needed energy and jobs.

Environmentalists say the pipeline would endanger the Ogallala aquifer in Nebraska and other states along the route. Yet they ignore the fact that there are 50,000 existing miles of pipeline already crisscrossing the U.S., including Nebraska. The technology is neither new nor unsafe. One of these is the Keystone 1 pipeline, which already carries crude from the oil sands.

Consider this: there are currently 21,000 miles of pipelines crossing Nebraska, including 3,000 miles carrying hazardous liquids, most of which lie within the Ogallala aquifer.  And an internet search for “Major U.S. Oil Pipeline Spills” yielded a Reuters article listing the quantity of leaked crude in gallons rather than barrels, a presentation which, as there are 42 US gallons to a barrel, was purely for effect.

Here’s the juice: pipelines are an integral part of our everyday life, and remain the safest, surest mode of large volume fuel transport….and if America doesn’t want Canada’s crude, Ottawa will be more than happy to sell it to the ChiComs.  One way or the other, the Athabasca tar sands will be exploited, exported and combusted.

Which makes any opposition to the Keystone XL so much Environazi propaganda.

Speaking of Left-Wing propaganda, the Journal offers the latest regarding what has rapidly become….

Solyndra on Rails

California’s high-speed rail project ‘is not financially feasible.’

California Governor Jerry Brown has a big dream about a very expensive train—$98.5 billion to be precise, running from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Neither the ballooning cost of building it, nor growing public opposition, nor a string of negative expert assessments have cooled the Governor’s ardor. So that leaves the California legislature to derail this boondoggle.

The case for the bullet train was iffy from the start and is now beyond salvation. A withering report this week from a state-appointed panel ought to drive the last nail in. The California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group, asked to judge the project, declared it “not financially feasible.” It said the rail route’s first leg, in the Central Valley between Merced and Bakersfield, would be especially noneconomic. And it asked the legislature not to approve Governor Brown’s plans to issue the first $2.7 billion batch of bonds this month to start construction on the 520-mile network.

The panel blew up just about every assumption offered about California’s answer to the French TGV. The current cost estimate, already triple what was sold to voters in 2008, will likely come in even higher. Federal, much less private, financing won’t be forthcoming. Projections for passenger traffic and revenues are unrealistic. The state auditor, the inspector general, California’s watchdog Legislative Analyst’s Office, the U.S. House Transportation Committee, among others, arrived at similar conclusions.

Four years ago, when they approved a $9 billion bond issue, California’s voters backed the project based on false advertising. If the referendum were held today, according to a Field poll last month, they’d vote it down by a two-to-one margin. Two-thirds of Californians want another say. The Golden State seems to flirt with bankruptcy every year, and voters appear to understand better than their politicians that a huge infrastructure project of dubious value may not be a good idea.

Governor Brown won’t hear of such fiscal realities. His spokesman said the peer review study “does not appear to add any arguments that are new or compelling enough to suggest a change in course.”

Let’s not forget that his supporters in the unions, who picked up the tab for the 2008 bond campaign, love this Solyndra on rails. So does the Obama Administration, which wants to make an high-speed rail example out of California. The Golden State would merely burnish an unfortunate reputation for fiscal lunacy unless legislators, who are at last starting to raise doubts, get off this ride.

Too bad old Moonbeam isn’t governor of Alaska; that way he could route his train over….

….Lisa Murkowski’s bridge!

And since we’re on the subject, James Taranto reports another piece of Progressive dementia in Best of the Web:

Why Do You Think They Call It A ‘Boy’-cott?

“Transgender advocates claim a new tampon advertisement takes the cringe factor surrounding women’s sanitary products to new lows by stereotyping its community members,” reports the New Zealand Herald. The ad, for Libra tampons, features two women–or so it appears at first:

Agender NZ president Cherise Witehira, said many in the transgender community were outraged at the ads which were “blatantly transphobic”. “It’s extremely offensive because it’s pretty much saying the only way you can be a woman is to get your period. (No….but it certainly separates the men from the girls!)

The Herald reports that “many vented on the company’s Libra Facebook page yesterday, saying they were boycotting the product.” So what brand of tampon are they going to use instead, Notex or Shampax?

Meanwhile, in the “That’s How WE Spell Relief!” segment, courtesy today of Bill Meisen, you’ll be relieved to know….

Mexican Grand Warlock predicts Obama loss in 2012

Mexico’s Grand Warlock predicted US President Barack Obama would fail to win re-election and two more Latin American leaders would be diagnosed with cancer, in a traditional New Year’s forecast Tuesday. The Grand Warlock, or “Brujo Mayor” in Spanish, leads a Mexican tradition of “brujeria” or sorcery centered in the southeastern city of Catemaco.

The Grand Warlock, also known as Antonio Vazquez, said that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who claims to have beaten an unspecified cancer, would have a “terrible relapse.”

Argentina’s President Cristina Kirchner, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, former Brazilian leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo have been diagnosed with cancer in recent years. Chavez suggested last month that the spate of cancer among leftist leaders could be a US plot.

Vazquez, who sports a long grey beard, put the cancer cases down to “witchcraft” against Latin American leaders, during a Mexico City news conference giving his 25th annual predictions.

We don’t know about you, but we’ll sure as heck sleep better the rest of the year!

On the Lighter Side….

Next up, courtesy of Ed Harvey, another sordid story ripped from the pages of the Crime Blotter:

Cops: North Merrick Robbers Wanted Teen’s Jeans

A teenager was attacked by three men who tried to rob him of his jeans near his North Merrick home early Sunday morning, Nassau County police said.

The 18-year-old man was walking on the east side of Meadowbrook Road when a small white car pull to the curb on the opposite side of the road near the corner of Bridge Street, the suspects got out and demanded his pants at 2 a.m., police said. After he refused the demands, the suspects punched the victim, causing severe swelling and a laceration above his right eye. He then ran home to contact the police.

To borrow a phrase from The Untouchables, this story stinks like a whorehouse at low tide!  Can you say “The male version of Tawana Brawley”?  We KNEW you could!

Finally, in a related story of licentious lawlessness….

Library Sends Police to Collect Overdue Books From 5-Year-Old

A Charlton mom says her local library crossed the line when they sent police to collect her daughter’s overdue library books. Charlton Police Sergeant Dan Dowd stopped by the home of Shannon Benoit to let her know that her daughter had two books several months overdue which needed to be returned or paid for.

Her mom says the 5-year-old girl was so afraid that she burst into tears. “I thought it was way overboard,” says Benoit. “I closed my door, I looked at my daughter and she started crying.” Hailey asked her mom if the police were going to arrest her. Hailey says, “I was scared.”

They found and returned the books, but Hailey’s mom argues that sending a cop to their house was like pounding a ten penny nail with a sledge hammer.

Even Sgt. Dowd admits he wasn’t real keen on it. “Nobody wanted to, on this end to get involved in it,” says Sgt. Dowd. “But the library contacted us, and the chief delegated, and apparently I was one of the low men on the totem pole.”

But state law does outline a misdemeanor for such things, and police thought a friendly reminder might make a better impression and get better results than a cold summons to court.

The Benoit’s insist they never got any warnings.

McGarrett, Danno, Kono and Chin Ho….

….these guys AIN’T!  All that’s left now is for The Obamao to determine the Charlton Police acted stupidly; though for once in his life….he’d be RIGHT!

Magoo