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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FastC6 who wrote (212743)	12/26/2001 2:13:36 AM
From: Patricia Trinchero	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769669

"A Republican or Democrat?" Probably just another radical fundamentalist. THey're popping up everywhere these days.

To: FastC6 who wrote (212743)	12/26/2001 5:55:45 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769669

American Taliban - the evil Democrats: Holding Bush Hostage With U.S. soldiers still at war in Afghanistan, Argentina defaulting on its loans and an India-Pakistan crisis looming along the border, yesterday was anything but an ordinary Christmas. As Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer pointed out, for President Bush it was harder still, given that the Senate "left close to 170 nominations languishing" when it adjourned for the holidays -- including 20 key members of Mr. Bush's foreign policy team. A President can't run the executive branch if the Senate won't allow him to fill it. It used to be that when Senators were huffy about not getting their way they'd hold up a bill or tie up floor debate. Nowadays, however, they gum up the appointment process. And so among those who have had their nominations blocked by Senators such as Joe Biden and Tom Harkin are 49 people who have had their hearings, were cleared by Senate committees and needed only a floor vote to go to work. All of which is a powerful argument for President Bush to correct this abuse by using his constitutional powers to make recess appointments. Oh, the Senators had their reasons. We're told that Delaware's Mr. Biden was upset that Amtrak's funding hadn't been reauthorized, while Iowa's Mr. Harkin was miffed that the White House opposed his boondoggle of a farm bill. Their revenge is to block State Department nominees who were to take up key positions involving refugee programs in Afghanistan, humanitarian relief, Latin America policy, not to mention an Ambassador to the Philippines -- where U.S. Special Forces are fighting Islamic terrorists linked to al Qaeda who are holding Americans hostage. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Biden has an obligation to see that U.S. policy can be executed. And this man wants to be President? The politics of pique While Senator Tom Daschle isn't masterminding the slow-walking of Bush nominees, surely as Majority Leader he bears responsibility for not curbing the obstructionism of Senators such as Mr. Biden and Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who's made an art form of sitting on Bush judicial picks for overburdened courts. Nor has Mr. Daschle done anything to halt the Senate's vindictive treatment of Otto Reich, nominated to be Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere. Senator Chris Dodd is still smarting from having tangled with Mr. Reich over the Nicaraguan Sandinistas in the 1980s. So now he refuses to give Mr. Reich even a hearing. And then, in a December 20 letter cosigned by GOP Senator Michael Enzi, he warns President Bush not to give Mr. Reich a recess appointment, on the astounding grounds that Mr. Reich "has not gone through the requisite committee process"! But nothing illustrates the Daschle Senate better than the treatment of Eugene Scalia, President Bush's pick to be the Labor Department's top lawyer. Back when a Republican-controlled Senate found itself at odds with then-President Clinton over the appointment of Bill Lann Lee as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Mr. Lee was given a hearing. And it was Democrats who fought sending his name to the floor for a vote -- because they knew he would lose. President Clinton then responded not with a regular recess appointment that would expire at the end of that Congress. Instead he named Mr. Lee Acting Assistant Attorney General, in clear violation of the Vacancies Act and something that even Mr. Clinton noted was not "entirely constitutional." In sharp contrast, Mr. Scalia would win a floor vote. He is being held up by Senator Ted Kennedy for what everyone knows is payback for the role his father, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, played in the Bush v. Gore recount case. Mr. Scalia was reported favorably out of the Senate Labor Committee in early October. But Mr. Daschle has prevented it from moving to the floor for a vote, telling ABC News he didn't think "the votes are there." There may not be 60 votes to end a filibuster against Mr. Scalia, but a clear majority of 54 Senators, including independent Jim Jeffords, are set to back him. Thus, Mr. Daschle seems to be creating a new extra-constitutional rule that "controversial" nominees like Mr. Scalia will need 60 Senators before Presidents get their choice of appointees. In supporting a filibuster, Mr. Daschle is refusing to let the Senate work its will, an abdication of its advise and consent role. No one can remember the last time a nominee who had the majority vote him out of committee did not then get a floor vote. In his press briefing last week, Mr. Fleischer did not rule out the President's use of recess appointments over the holidays to install Messrs. Reich and Scalia. President Bush may also use his recess powers to fill critical posts at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the National Labor Relations Board, the latter of which oversees union-management disputes but has only two out of five seats filled. Liberal groups are intent on Mr. Bush not naming a majority of members to the NLRB. They have already forced J. Robert Brame to withdraw his name from consideration to one seat. Americans United for Separation of Church and State claimed he had a record of "leadership of religious-political extremist groups on the farthest fringes of the religious right." This is truly bizarre. It was President Clinton who nominated Mr. Brame to one of the board's GOP seats in 1997. The Senate then easily confirmed him for a term that ended in 2000. The Constitution allowed recess appointments in anticipation of a Senate that would abuse its confirmation powers. That has been the Democratic Senate's tactic with President Bush, even as he prosecutes a war on terror. Should the President not now exercise his legitimate authority in making recess appointments, he will signal to the Daschle Democrats that they will pay no price for monkey-wrench politics. And their pattern of willful obstructionism will only escalate. interactive.wsj.com m ...Bush sent Reich's nomination to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July. But the committee has never held a hearing to consider his confirmation, and its Democratic leadership has said it never will. As it began its year-end recess late Thursday, the Senate returned his name to the White House for the second time this year, the only nominee in any department to be twice rejected without a single vote cast.... washingtonpost.com