Adding Nuts to the Administration Via Recess Appointments

UPDATE- that didn't take long: RT @marcambinder: BULLETIN: Obama announces more than a dozen recess appointments, including NRLB nominee Craig Becker.
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Obama has yet to run out of crazy and/or dangerous friends and some of those could end up in the administration via recess appointments:

President Obama is spending a quiet family weekend at Camp David but he could stir up another wave of partisan acrimony today by using recess appointments to fill some administration posts - among them Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board.

All 41 Senate Republicans wrote Obama this week urging him not to use a recess appointment for Becker, a former top lawyer with Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO. The Chamber of Commerce also wrote Obama on behalf, it said, of 20 business groups that oppose Becker's nomination.

Obama has yet to make a recess appointment.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa and chairman of the Health, Labor, Education and Pensions Committee, told Congressional Quarterly this week that Becker would soon land at the NRLB. "It's going to happen," Harkin said. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis told the AFL-CIO meeting in Orlando March 3 that labor leaders would be "very pleased" with Obama's handling of Becker during the Easter recess.

White House officials had no comment Friday on Obama's plans. The officials' only advice over the weekend: "stay tuned."

The Senate GOP letter asked Obama not to act "in contravention of the bipartisan Senate vote against" Becker's nomination. Republicans suggested Obama scrap Becker's nomination and appoint one Democrat, Mark Pearce, and one Republican, Brain Lewis, to the other vacant seats. Democrats suspect Obama will appoint Becker and Pearce during the Passover/Easter recess that officially begins today.

"We oppose Mr. Becker’s recess appointment because of his extensive, highly controversial writings, and his entire legal and scholarly career, all of which indicate that he could not be viewed as impartial, unbiased, or objective in deciding cases before this quasi-judicial agency," the GOP letter said. "Instead, his writings clearly indicate that he would use his position on the NLRB to institute far-reaching changes in labor law far exceeding the Board’s authority and bypassing the role of Congress."

You may recall that during the last year or so of the Bush administration Harry Reid kept the Senate in session during normal recess periods by having a local Senator, like Virginia Sen. James Webb, show up everyday to pretend to open and close a Senate session. Reid did that to prevent Bush from making any recess appointments the Democrats didn't like.

It's clear to me that Reid no longer has an objection to these appointments if they come from Obama, because he shares the same lefty political views Obama does and doesn't want to have to fight to get some of the crazier and more dangerous nominees through the Senate confirmation process.

Any appointments Obama makes at during recess will only help the GOP in the long run as they will confirm just how far out of the mainstream Obama really is.