Happy weekend everyone! I hope you’re having a good one. A little birdie told me that liberalgeek is having a birthday today, so everyone wish him a happy birthday. I think he’s turning 29 today. So let’s start this open thread.
As expected, President Obama has made some recess appointments:
The White House has just announced that President Obama has made fifteen recess appointments, including several for hot-button nominees. These are appointees Republicans refused to allow votes on and for which the president’s supporters have been pressing for recess appointees.
Notable on the list are Craig Becker to NLRB and Chai Feldblum to EEOC.
In arguing for the appointments the press release states: “President Bush had made 15 recess appointments by this point in his presidency, but he was not facing the same level of obstruction. At this time in 2002, President Bush had only 5 nominees pending on the floor. By contrast, President Obama has 77 nominees currently pending on the floor, 58 of whom have been waiting for over two weeks and 44 of those have been waiting more than a month.”
If Republicans keep up their temper tantrums, the only way things will get done in Washington is by reconciliation, recess appointments and executive orders. Do Republicans really want to be irrelevant?
Various members of the DNC — including Chairman Tim Kaine, Executive Director Jen O’Malley Dillon and Communications Director Brad Woodhouse — contacted their respective RNC counterparts this week in hopes of getting RNC Chairman Michael Steele to co-sign a document with Kaine that, in part, called for “elected officials of both parties to set an example of the civility we want to see in our citizenry.”
“We also call on all Americans to respect differences of opinion, to refrain from inappropriate forms of intimidation, to reject violence and vandalism, and to scale back rhetoric that might reasonably be misinterpreted by those prone to such behavior,” read the proposed joint statement, which came at the end of a week that saw acts of vandalism and threats of violence directed at members of Congress from both parties, but mostly aimed at Democrats who voted yes on the health care bill.
Republicans see the statement as an attempt to force them to either reject the statement — allowing Democrats to say the RNC finds the incidents acceptable — or to sign on to something that the DNC would later wield against them.
The Republican party doesn’t care if people get hurt, especially if it helps them politically. They should have thought about the political implications of not signing the statement.