By Andrew P. Napolitano
The president's men trash the Constitution to pursue antagonists
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
A federal appeals court cast doubt Wednesday not only on President Obama's controversial January recess appointments but on most such appointments, using oral arguments to question whether presidential powers can ever be used unless Congress has officially adjourned for the end of a year.
Stadiums and hospitals removed from the districts of black congressional members and country clubs newly drawn into those of white incumbents. A lawyer emailing "No bueno" to a Republican staffer about plans that risked leaving a paper trail and jeopardizing the legality of a voting map. Those were among the evidence a Washington federal court used to determine that Texas Republican lawmakers discriminated against minorities while drawing new political boundaries.
A Guantanamo Bay detainee who says he was waterboarded lost a legal battle Friday when a federal appeals court ruled that the Obama administration can keep information secret that the prisoner wanted to make public.
The Obama administration pleaded with an appeals court Monday to overturn a judge's order halting federal funding of stem cell research, arguing that the ban would irreparably harm scientific progress toward potentially lifesaving medical treatment.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
He said presidents were intended to have a free hand to staff offices.
"Judge Sentelle and Judge Griffith have yet to go back to the summer of 1787 that they claim to revel in. If they were to go back to the summer of 1787, they would see the framers were intent on restricting the legislature's appointment role," he said. "They would see the recess appointment clause, as I've tried to frame it in my amicus brief, was the capstone of a summer's work to try to restrict the legislature."
