January 18, 2012

Consider this an entry into the suggestion box for Newton Leroy McPherson Gingrich...

Mr. G.;

You're a brilliant guy. But brilliance is not a job requirement (or even much of a benefit) for the chief executive of... well, anything. But particularly the chief executive of the United States, the POTUS.

What we need in a president is (a) administrative skills, (b) a presidential mien, (c) charisma, (d) gravitas, and above all, (e) leadership. A dollop of imagination and creativity helps to turn a good president into a great historical figure; but without the bedrock requirements of a to e, a president's nothing but sass misspelled.

I think it's long overdue to burst your bubble: You are never going to be President of the United States... and you would be a dreadful disappointment if you ever managed it, a conservative Barack H. "Bubble Boy" Obama.

But that doesn't alter the fact that you're a brilliant, entertaining, and illuminating guy. So can't we put our heads together and find you a better gig than your current booking? Because, to be honest, man, you're running long.

First, let's identify your forte: What you have going for you more than any other characteristic is a scintillating, opalescent, amethystine tongue; if you were Irish, I'd say you'd kissed the Blarney Stone. So let's run with that for a moment.

Have you ever considered that your enduring legacy, your finest moment, your immortality might come from... just -- speaking? Ponder this: Instead of running for the presidency, a frutile and footless task, wouldn't your time be better spent barnstorming the country, giving pep-talks for conservatism and Capitalism and priming the GOP brand?

I honestly believe that the best way for you to save our country and perhaps Western Civ itself would be to terminate your interminable campaign, and get the Republican National Committee to fund a permanent job for Newt Gingrich, yourself, to spend the next ten years speaking at every gathering of a minyan or more of eager ears; to let the gospel of liberty, individualism, American exceptionalism, innovation, Capitalism, and genius ring from every village and every hamlet.

And, oh yes, to leave administration to the administrators, of greater or lesser brilliance.

At least that's how it looks to me. Mitt for la Casa Blanca, but Newton Leroy for the masses!

And while we're at it, let's talk about that "mining the Moon" idea; I have some colleagues who can give you a goatload of suggestions...

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 18, 2012, at the time of 12:14 AM | Comments (0)

January 17, 2012

On January 10th, a panel of the 10th Circus Court of Appeals refused to lift a district-court injunction against certifying an Oklahoma initiative constitutional amendment that received 70% support from voters. The initiative would ban the use of international law and sharia law in Oklahoma courts, but the 10th Circuit held that it violated the Establishment clause of the United States Constitution:

A proposed constitutional amendment that would ban Oklahoma courts from considering international or Islamic law discriminates against religions, and a Muslim community leader has the right to challenge its constitutionality, a federal appeals court said Tuesday.

The court in Denver upheld U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange's order blocking implementation of the amendment shortly after it was approved by 70 percent of Oklahoma voters in November 2010.

Muneer Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations [CAIR] in Oklahoma, sued to block the law from taking effect, arguing that the Save Our State Amendment violated his First Amendment rights.

"This is an important reminder that the Constitution is the last line of defense against a rising tide of anti-Muslim bigotry in our society, and we are pleased that the appeals court recognized that fact," Awad said. "We are also hopeful that this decision serves as a reminder to politicians wishing to score political points through fear-mongering and bigotry. "The amendment read, in part: "The courts shall not look to the legal precepts of other nations or cultures. Specifically, the courts shall not consider international law or Sharia law."

I don’t see how it can be considered unequal treatment, or even "anti-Muslim bigotry," for all Oklahomans to be governed by the same state and federal constitutions, the same law, and the same court procedures. This amendment does not prohibit practicing the "religion of peace" [actually, the religion of submission -- DaH]. So why would this violate anyone's rights, Moslem or otherwise?

True, the amendment mentions Sharia law in couple of places. I don't necessarily buy the supporters explanation that Sharia was used merely as an example; I am sure whoever proposed the amendment had the real threat of Sharia law in mind. I certainly hope he did!

But as long as the operative parts of the law do not single out Sharia -- for example, banning Sharia law in the Oklahoma courts while allowing, say, Catholic canon law or Jewish Talmudic law; and so long as the law bans all international, religious, tribal, or traditional laws that are not a part of American and Oklahoman jurisprudence (as it looks like it does), I don't see why that should be considered discriminatory or unequal protection.

Maybe it takes a lawyer to believe such a thing.

Awad argued that the ban on Islamic law would likely affect every aspect of his life as well as the execution of his will after his death. The appeals court pointed out that Awad made a "strong showing" of potential harm.

What aspect of Mr. Awad's life does this amendment affect so negatively? I am sure this amendment does not prohibit him from washing his feet before prayer, or pressing his forehead to a prayer rug five times a day. It does not prohibit his female family members from wearing burkas, unless the girls want to join JROTC -- wait, scratch that. So what upsets Awad so?

But perhaps he has other concerns. Is he discriminated against when the law prevents a future Oklahoma sharia court from allowing a Moslem father to kill a daughter who kisses a boy at school? Perhaps it's unequal protection under the law when devout radical Islamists are disallowed, despite sharia, from mutilating their toddler-daughter’s genitals. Or maybe Awad is concerned that his fellow CAIR-mates cannot practice their religion -- if their religion tells them to beat the living daylights out of a son for refusing to kill Mom, should Mom ever dare file for divorce against a violent Islamic husband?

Perhaps Mr.Awad demands only the right to stone to death some woman who was just gang raped, or a gay man who was caught in the act, or a female Christian or Jew who happened to wander into the sharia-ruled neighborhood without being veiled and swaddled and in the tow of a male relative. Awad is a reasonable man; he doesn't demand everyone become a Moslem... they can simply pay the dhimmi tax instead.

Yes, those quaint customs and laws enunciated by sharia courts around the world would certainly conflict with American-style jurisprudence. If banning sharia law would actually affect American Moslems’ lives in these ways -- and I hope it would! -- I am extremely glad that our federal Constitution and the Oklahoma state constitution are "discriminatory" against such savagery, bigotry, and anachronistic brutality.

Much of sharia law, Roman law, the Napoleonic Code, Talmudic law, the Code of Hammurabi, the Code Duello, and indeed contemporary, so-called "international law," is completely at odds with Americanism and the vision of the Founders, which we the people accept as our source of law, common law, and court procedures. And if Mr. Awad would like to live under such alternative codes, then perhaps he could move to any of a number of Islamist countries who will cheerfully accommodate his wishes.

But don’t force the rest of us to live under it.

What really upsets me is the hypocrisy of the appeals court. They say that "Awad made a 'strong Showing' of potential harm". But, Sharia law itself makes a strong showing of actually harming Moslems, especially Moslem women. If the state institutes sharia sectors within its territory, or allows mosques or Islamist madrasah to implement them, it will expand like a cancer until all Moslems in the state will be required or heavily pressured to live under sharia law; and that assuredly is discriminating (horrifically) against Moslems.

What happens to a woman who wants to marry a non-Moslem man, stay single and pursue a career, divorce her husband, or who is assaulted by her brother or father? The judges of the circuit court in Denver, as well as trial Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange (who issued the injunction against certifying the initiative), ruled that Moslem women need not be protected under the same law as other Americans. Again, only a lawyer could consider that to be constitutional.

Mr. Awad’s lawsuit reveals CAIR’s real intention: No matter what they say, their ultimate goal is to implement sharia throughout the United States, throughout the West, and ultimately throughout the entire world. CAIR fights through trickery, through "lawfare," through regulation and friendly legislation, and through our wackiest liberal judges. (This is collectively called Dawa, which is all elements of jihad short of full-scale war.)

The case now returns to federal court in Oklahoma City to determine the constitutionality of the proposed amendment. “My office will continue to defend the state in this matter and proceed with the merits of the case,” Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt said in a statement.

CAIR pretends Oklahomans' decision was an overreaction caused by unfounded "Islamophobia." However, we Americans, including the 70% of Oklahomans who voted for the amendment, know how incredibly dangerous Moslem extremists are. We all saw the devastation of 9/11 and the subsequent 10-Years War in Iraq and Afganistan.

But Moslems in the US are not and never were rounded up, segregated, forced to live under discriminatory "Jamal Crow" laws, or herded into concentration camps. Rather, Americans believe everyone in a jurisdiction should live under the same laws, not that bellicose pressure groups should get to live under their own private laws. That is the real equality of rights under the law and the real America that 70% of Oklahomans voted for, the America that no activist judge will be allowed to take away from us.

Hatched by Sachi on this day, January 17, 2012, at the time of 8:34 PM | Comments (0)

January 14, 2012

I'm all in favor of authors self-publishing -- even though all my own novels have been published by Big Publishing, and I really have no complaints about that paradigm either. There are advantages and disadvantages to each; but the bottom line is that unless you're already a bestselling author, you're very unlikely to make big bucks (quit-the-day-job bucks) self publishing a novel. (And of course if you are already a bestseller, then why do you need to self publish in the first place?)

Still, I'm not averse. I have a pitch for a new SF novel -- my first in a number of years -- under submission right now... to Big Publishing. But hey, if that falls through, I have enough confidence in the novel, via my 26 friggin' years in the novel-writing biz, to spend what it takes to publish it myself.

But not through Amazon Digital Services, however.

Comes to that, I would publish through an independent company (Amazon will still be happy to make it available through the Kindle, of course). And if I go that self-publishing route, I promise, as God is my witness, to contract to make the book available via "print on demand" in a regular dead-tree version, in addition to digital media.

There must be many others like myself who just can't bring ourselves to read novels on screen, or even on e-ink; at least until that technology improves markedly, particularly in the realm of pixel density.

A high-quality print job usually uses a density of 1,250 dpi ([printed] dots per inch, a linear measurement); that gives the human eye the illusion of continuous print, like an old-fashioned inked forme. Display monitors aren't that dot-dense -- or pixel-dense, as electronic displays are measured. High-quality monitors can range from barely over 100 ppi (pixels per inch) in large displays to a maximum of somewhat over 300, but only on very small displays, like some cell phones. 300+ ppi on a large display would be prohibitively expensive, due to the cost of the display technology.

It's tough to compare dpi to ppi, because the wider range of colors available to monitors generally makes up for the lower pixel density. Except in black and white, however, where the only color is (surprise!) black. By a curious coincidence, black and white is the normal "color scheme" of the interior pages of most books. In that respect, the comparison is direct: 1,250 dpi, or even up to 1,800, in actual print, versus less than 350 ppi on the best (and smallest!) screens. The Amazon Kindle, as well as the Barnes & Noble Nook, clocks in at 167 ppi.

A more useful measurement than ppi (dpi) might be ppsi (dpsi), pixels (or dots) per square inch; since letters, punctuation, and other characters are two-dimensional, ppsi/dpsi gives you a better idea how dense each character is: A 167 ppi Kindle screen yields just under 28,000 ppsi; but a 600 dpi printed book translates into 360,000 dpsi. And high-quality printing, 1,250 dpi, yields a whopping 1.56 million dots per square inch.

I don't own a Kindle (or Nook), and I have no plans to buy one -- until, that is, it can display black and white text at a minimum of, say, 600 ppi. At that pixel density, the number of dots/pixels alotted to an individual character would be about 13 times as many as in the same size character on an e-ink reader. (The full 1,250 ppi, mimicking high-quality, slick magazine print, generates character images using 56 times as many dots per square inch as a Kindle or Nook.) That is a big, big difference... enough to spell the difference between what's comfortable for me to read and what gives me a headache trying to resolve the text!

All of which is preamble to my quandry: I am very happy to publicize the first novel by Aaron Worthing, Archangel (click the link to take you to the novel's page on Amazon)... but I cannot honestly say that I have bought or even plan to buy it. Worthing, as many of you already know, is an erstwhile blogger at Patterico's Pantaloons who recently admitted that the name is a pseudonym (Aaron Worthing, not the blogname).

I have nothing bad to say about the novel; the only reason I haven't read it is that I cannot read low-quality displays without cranial pain. Alas, since Archangel is only available in Kindle format, I can't read the darned thing!

Aaron is a great guy; and as Beldar says, the conceit of the novel is certainly interesting: a superhero who appears on 9/11, rescuing victims of the most evil terrorist attack in human history -- and changing history itself in the process. Alack, the low level of e-ink display technology prevents me from being able to enjoy a book that exists only electronically.

Aaron's novel Archangel might be as fantastic as the immortal Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, by Gary Wolf. Lord knows I hope it is... because then Aaron might indeed earn the Big Bux for which we authors ever seek, as Parsifal sought the Holy Grail. And that would illustrate the triumph of Capitalism, in all it's small-business glory.

So if you enjoy reading books on Kindle, I strongly urge you to buy ($9.99) and read Archangel... then please let me know what you think of it!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 14, 2012, at the time of 5:05 AM | Comments (2)

January 13, 2012

All right, somebody has to aay it. Why not the guy who has about as much tact as a hungover Sam Kinison on an acid flashback? That is, why not Señor Lizard himself?

If Mitt Romney wins the nomination, as seems likely, then Newt Gingrich can have only one consistent and non-hypocritical response: Newt will be forced to campaign for the re-election of Barack H. Obama.

Given the level of Gingrich's hysteria, vitriol, and angst against and about Romney, any political action he undertakes other than full-throatedly calling for Romney's defeat and Obama's victory would reveal Gingrich as a two-faced, insincere demagogue driven by political expediency and personal vendetta, j'accusing Romney's Bain Capital of gleefully bankrupting companies just for sheer wickedness and nihilism -- like a modern-day George Soros -- and savaging the entire concept of the vital "creative destruction" of Capitalism itself.

As we like to say, Gingrich has painted himself into a hole, where he's busily sawing off the branch he's sitting on. It's long past time for him to drop out of the race (for sake of his circulatory system, if nothing else), go on Wanderjahr for a few months, then resurface no earlier than September, vigorously supporting Romney... with the implausible but irrefutable explanation that Gingrich had been suffering from Attention Surplus Sydrome, generating a negative-campaigning feedback loop.

His consistency/credibility factor will drop through the floor; but there are times when Ralph Waldo Emerson's infamous exhortation must take precedence over defending every attack one has ever made: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

At this point, there's no statesman littler than Newt Gingrich; so what has he got to lose?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 13, 2012, at the time of 1:01 AM | Comments (2)

January 9, 2012

The Washington Times newspaper reports -- take a deep breath -- that Barack H. Obama plans to share our ballistic missile defense (BMD) technology with Russia... including our newest mid-range missile, Standard Missile 3 (SM3).

When I heard this news, my mouth fell open, and I could not believe my ears (a bad face day). Surely even President B.O. wouldn't commit such a monumental stupidity!

Sadly, yes:

In the president’s signing statement issued Saturday in passing into law the fiscal 2012 defense authorization bill, Mr. Obama said restrictions aimed at protecting top-secret technical data on U.S. Standard Missile-3 velocity burnout parameters might impinge on his constitutional foreign policy authority.

As first disclosed in this space several weeks ago, U.S. officials are planning to provide Moscow with the SM-3 data, despite reservations from security officials who say that doing so could compromise the effectiveness of the system by allowing Russian weapons technicians to counter the missile. The weapons are considered some of the most effective high-speed interceptors in the U.S. missile defense arsenal.

There are also concerns that Russia could share the secret data with China and rogue states such as Iran and North Korea to help their missile programs defeat U.S. missile defenses.

Really, you think?

Why whould Obama even counterplate such a thing? What's to gain, even for the capo di tutti capi of gangster government?

Their thinking is that if the Russians know the technical data, it will help allay Moscow’s fears that the planned missile defenses in Europe would be used against Russian ICBMs. Officials said current SM-3s are not fast enough to catch long-range Russian missiles, but a future variant may have some anti-ICBM capabilities.

Ah ha. So the president also plans to leak our most vital secrets from tomorrow's missile technology as well. It makes perfect sense; as a Progressivist, he's a forward-thinking guy.

But really, why shouldn't we keep Russia on its toes? Isn't it a good thing if they're too afraid to invade Europe because they're unsure about our BMD capability? What good derives from letting our previous and potentially future enemy know our vulnerabilities?

Frequent readers of Big Lizards know that I test missile systems for the Navy. I just completed a series of mandatory annual "releasability" training; the instructors drilled us on what information we can and cannot release even to our allies -- Aussies, Japanese, and some (but not all) European countries.

The rules regarding foreign disclosure of military technology are very complex; even though we don't anticipate that the U.K., for example, will use our own technology against us, we nevertheless don't give away our state of the art technology.

Except, evidently, to Obama's new BFF, Vladimir Putin.

Ballistic missile defense (BMD) is part of our AEGIS defense system. AEGIS BMD is a countermeasure against ballistic-missile attacks on our seaborne platforms: destroyers and cruisers, as well as any other ship defended by destroyers or cruisers, including carrier strike groups, supertankers in convoys, and so forth. If this technology is revealed to our pals at the Kremlin, it will quickly be shared with hostile countries; it's like giving a gang leader a spare key to your front door.

Not only this is very dangerous, it is also very illegal; if an ordinary person did secretly what Obama plots to do with great fanfare, he would find himself the defendant of a criminal trial for espionage (unless he was a liberal reporter):

Section 1227 of the defense law prohibits spending any funds that would be used to give Russian officials access to sensitive missile-defense technology, as part of a cooperation agreement without first sending Congress a report identifying the specific secrets, how they would be used and steps to protect the data from compromise.

The president also must certify to Congress that Russia will not share the secrets with other states and that it will not help Russia "to develop countermeasures" to U.S. defenses.

The certification also must show whether Russia is providing equal access to its missile defense technologies, which are mainly nuclear-tipped anti-missile interceptors.

But we are talking about the Obamunist, who thinks laws for paupers don't apply to princes:

Mr. Obama said in the signing statement that he would treat the legal restrictions as "non-binding."

"[M]y administration will also interpret and implement section 1244(sic) in a manner that does not interfere with the president’s constitutional authority to conduct foreign affairs and avoids the undue disclosure of sensitive diplomatic communications," Mr. Obama said.

If Russia gets hold of our SM3s, then Red China will have them shortly. From Red China to North Korea is a short step... followed by Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and of course al-Qaeda. How do you think Chinese Silkworm missiles (derived from a Soviet missile) ended up on both sides in the Iran-Iraq war? Where do we suppose Hezbollah in Lebanon got the more advanced rockets they're now firing into Israel? Who supplied the sophisticated IEDs that flooded into Iraq in the late 2000s?

I can see only one political benefit to President Obama from giving up our most advanced mid-range missile technology to Russia: When SM3s wind up in the possession of radical Islamist terrorist groups, it might precipitate a terrible, worldwide national-security crisis; and if the timing is just right, Obama might be able to frighten people away from voting Republican, from "changing horses in mid-stream." At such a critical moment, we don't dare switch presidents now -- times are just too uncertain!

Better the Obama you know than the Obama you don't. What a wonderful "October surprise" that would be, and... happy Halloween!

Hatched by Sachi on this day, January 9, 2012, at the time of 4:16 PM | Comments (0)

January 7, 2012

It's not an easy question for a non-conservative anti-liberal like myself to answer. First, I enthusiastically support some of Rick Santorum's social positions -- he promotes a more robust civil society; supports restricting legal marriage to traditional, one man-one woman; and he has offered bills to expand funding of adult stem-cell research and application.

But I recoil in horror from others, notably his demand that schools teach the "scientific alternative" to evolutionary biology (by which he means the thoroughly un-scientific and misnamed "intelligent design"); and he is completely opposed to embryonic stem-cell research funding, without consideration that such research can probably be done without destroying the embryos. (I'm using Wikipedia's list of some of his positions, though I did backtrack as much as possible to the primary-source interviews and Santorum's own site.)

But considering the second part of the question -- whether his positions on social issues are so extreme as to drive me away, despite his fairly good fiscal and foreign policies (which are at least somewhat better than Romney's) -- I'm on firmer ground. Santorum supports House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan's (R-WI, 96%) spending-cut plan and pushes for moderate reforms to Medicare and Social Security, but nothing spectacular like privatization (too bad). On the foreign-policy front, he supports the War Against Radical Islamism (WARI) and wants to bomb Iran's nuclear sites (good if he can pull it off, bad if he tries and fails).

So which side wins? Although I am appalled by what a friend of mine refers to as Santorum's "Flat-Earth Catholicism," I just don't think it would ever come up in a Rick Santorum presidency, not substantively. I doubt any state is going to attempt to outlaw "sodomy," adultery, or contraception; and even if it tried, surely the opinion of the POTUS would matter little if any in the ensuing court fight.

Where the social stances might really matter, however, is in the election itself. I'm not worried that President Santorum would install a "Nehemiah Scudder" style prophetic theocracy (though 2012 is the very year the Rev. Scudder takes over, according to Robert Heinlein's "future history" timeline!); but a great many voters might fear just that. Irrational, yes; but elections rarely turn on rational and logical cogitation alone. Would Santorum's goofier social stances so frighten away voters not on the religious right?

Yes, probably some. But how many? Fortunately, most of Santorum's apostasies from the norms of modern thought are fairly technical in nature, such as the distinction between science and so-called "intelligent design," which looms very large indeed within the real scientific community but likely induces nothing from the mass of voters but a puzzled "Eh?" Most of the social positions will just zoom along below the electoral radar.

I believe the biggest danger would be Santorum's suggestion that, contrary to the Supreme Court's decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, Americans have no fundamental right to privacy. Such a stance may make sense in a technical, legal sense, at least as the Court clumsily expressed the thought in the case in question; but the vast majority of Americans passionately believe that there exists a fundamental core of individual liberty, inside of which government may not legislate.

The Court shouldn't have called it "privacy;" and it certainly shouldn't have concluded (in Roe v. Wade) that the right of "privacy" includes the right to abort zygotes, foetuses, and even babies within minutes of being fully born. (Actually, I believe that last position is an abomination even under Roe; my, what progress we have made!) Ne'theless, nearly everybody agrees that there is an irreducible shell of personal liberty surrounding every man and woman that protects him from a totalitarian government run amok.

I can prove my case with a single example: Does anybody believe that it would be constitutional for a state to enact a law proscribing how many times per week a husband and wife are allowed to make love in their own home?

If you answer No, then you necessarily believe that (a) such a law breaches that fundamental core of individual liberty, the irreducible shell; and (b) there are inviolable limits to federal and state government beyond those explicitly written into the Constitiution.

To the extent that voters believe Rick Santorum's dismissal of a "right to privacy" means he rejects the irreducible shell of personal liberty described above, said voters will be very likely to vote for Barack H. Obama over the "theocratic" Rick Santorum.

Santorum's vital task, then, is to reassure Americans that his thinking on what most people envision when they hear the word "privacy" is still aligned within the mainstream of modern thought; that he does not advocate government control over aspects of life that the huge majority believe belong to the conscience of the individual, not the diktats of a Council of Experts.

If Santorum can assure voters -- including the arrogant author of this post -- that he is not a "Flat-Earther" on any social issue that really counts, then we might be persuaded to support him more than Mitt Romney. That is, until and unless Santorum's campaign collapses like all the other not-romneys before him.

Cross-posted on Hot Air's rogues' gallery...

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 7, 2012, at the time of 3:10 AM | Comments (3)

January 4, 2012

Big Lizards hereby inaugurates (if I may use that word) a new political-rhetoric award called the Daley, after former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley. We shall award it whenever a politician makes a gaffe, in the Kinsleyan mode of inadvertently blurting out the truth, by inexpertly managing his syntax.

Daley was mayor for 21 years; he made his eponymic gaffe (well, now it's an eponym) during the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in the Windy City. His oral manglement has become legendary:

Gentlemen, get the thing straight once and for all -- the policeman isn't there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder.

Obama has made so many similar gaffes -- e.g., his wonderfully bizarre eruption of "Don't call my bluff!" -- that he deserves not only to be today's recipient but simultaneously the second recipient emeritus as well. (The first is of course, and always, Vice President "Slow" Joe Biden, who is awarded his own emeritus status retroactive to sometime during the Spanish-American War, when he first entered the Senate.)

Obama's Daley occurred not so very long ago; in fact, it will occur later today, in prepared remarks that he hasn't even given yet. Here we go:

"I refuse to take 'No' for an answer. I’ve said before that I will continue to look for every opportunity to work with Congress to move this country forward. But when Congress refuses to act in a way that hurts our economy and puts people at risk, I have an obligation as president to do what I can without them," he will say, according to prepared remarks.

Well! Who can argue with that?

The underlying context is equally disreputable. The Constitution allows the POTUS to temporarily appoint cabinet and sub-cabinet members without senatorial confirmation, but only when the Senate is in recess. Such "recess appointments" serve for one year. But by longstanding tradition, the Senate is only in "recess" when it has shut down for an extended period of time -- a minimum of three days without formally gaveling in a session.

But today, President B.O. appointed Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to head the newly invented Consumer Financial Protection Bureau only one day after the Senate held a regular, if pro forma, session; and Republicans argue this is an illegal appointment to seize power from Congress.

Even Obama himself agrees... or he did, way back in 2010, when his own Deputy Soliciter General argued in favor of the "three-day" rule to the U.S. Supreme Court, and during George W. Bush's presidency, when Obama was in the Senate and fully supported the rule:

The Constitution gives the president the power to make appointments when the Senate is not in session and able to confirm them. Traditionally that has been understood to mean when the Senate has adjourned for a recess longer than 10 days, and a Clinton administration legal opinion said a recess must be at least three days.

Mr. Obama’s own top constitutional lawyers affirmed that view in 2010 in another case involving recess appointments. Asked what the standard was for making recess appointments, then-Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal told the justices the administration agreed with the three-day rule....

The three-day rule was also the precedent Mr. Obama and his fellow Senate Democrats followed in 2007 and 2008 when they were trying to block then-President George W. Bush from making recess appointments.

“I am keeping the Senate in pro forma to prevent recess appointments until we get this process back on track,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, said on Nov. 16, 2007, as he announced his strategy of having the Senate convene twice a week for pro forma sessions.

Now that the shoe is on the other hand, Harry "Pinky" Reid (D-Caesar's Palace, 75%) has changed his mind; he fully supports the president being allowed to make a "recess" appointment the very day after a session. All previous opinions of Reid's are inoperative.

I reckon means that future presidents can make them throughout the year, every Saturday and Sunday. No longer need they trouble the Senate to confirm or reject executive appointments. What a relief!

This one is likely headed to court, giving the president ample opportunity to win the Daley award several more times on this selfsame issue.

Instant update: Before even publishing this post, we have an update. It's a scoop!

Just hours after appointing Corday to head the CFPB, and still only one day after the last Senate session, the Obamunist in Chief made three more "recess" appointments, this time to the National Labor Relations Board:

President Barack Obama is bypassing GOP opposition to make three more recess appointments -- this time to the National Labor Relations Board.

The move came hours after Obama used a similar tactic to install former Ohio Atty. Gen. Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

Both moves infuriated GOP leaders, who threatened legal action and warned that Obama was setting a dangerous precedent by ignoring the will of Congress.

What fun! We must be nearing the Rupture, when the One shall rule entirely by decree, to officially inaugurate (if I may use that term yet again) the Obamic Millennium.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, January 4, 2012, at the time of 1:35 PM | Comments (2)

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