Mainstream Press Struck By Unanimous Court Rebuke Of Obama's Unconstitutional Overreach

On Monday, the Supreme Court will release their decision in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby. This decision affecting religious freedom and government overreach is one of the most anticipated ruling of this session of the SCOTUS.

Today, the Senate is not in session. It will return on Monday, July 7 for a Pro forma sessions at noon and again on Thursday at 1:30 PM.

Yesterday, the Senate voted 57-39 to invoke cloture on the nomination of Cheryl Krause to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Third Circuit. Democrats once again used the precedent of the nuclear option to break Senate rules and allow cloture on nominations with fewer than 60 votes. Later in the day the Senate voted 93-0 to confirm Stuart Jones to be Ambassador to Iraq. Robert Beecroft was confirmed to be Ambassador to Egypt by voice vote, and four other executive branch nominations were also confirmed by voice vote.

The House is not in session. It will reconvene at 11:30 AM on Monday, June 30, for a pro-forma session. The House members are back in their districts for "constituents work week" and will not be back in full session until July 8th.

The Washington Post writes today, “The Supreme Court decision invalidating President Obama’s use of recess appointments laid bare the legal and political risks the president faces as he makes the aggressive use of executive power a core tenet of his second term. With Congress refusing to embrace his agenda, Obama has turned to his presidential powers to take unilateral action on several controversial issues. He has postponed requirements of the Affordable Care Act. He has authorized tough new rules limiting power plant emissions. And he is seeking to impose new regulations to require companies to pay their employees more in overtime. But as the Supreme Court case underscored Thursday, Obama’s high-profile assertions of executive power — part of a so-called ‘year of action’ — are often the start of the story, not the end. Beyond Thursday’s ruling, Obama faces a new challenge in the form of a lawsuit against his executive actions that House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) plans to file, as well as lingering ­cases in the courts that could put other initiatives at risk. ‘The president is saying that he’s tired of gridlock. So he’s going to solve it on his terms. That’s not how the system works,’ said George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley, an Obama supporter. ‘There’s a reason why things are not getting done in Congress. The reason Congress is divided is the voters are divided.’”

And yet, the AP notes, “Before a unanimous Supreme Court weighed in, the White House had brushed off claims that President Barack Obama was exceeding his executive authority as just so much grousing from frustrated partisans.”

The White House’s arrogant dismissal received a sharp rebuke form the unanimous Court. In an editorial, The Wall Street Journal discusses just how out of bounds the president’s move was. “The Supreme Court handed President Obama his 13th unanimous loss in two years on Thursday, and this one may be the most consequential. All nine Justices voted to overturn Mr. Obama's non-recess recess appointments as an unconstitutional abuse of power. Over nearly 238 years of American history, the Supreme Court has never had to review the President's authority to temporarily fill vacant executive offices when Congress is adjourned. Mr. Obama's 2012 maneuver to void the Senate's advice and consent role triggered a judicial intercession, and defeats at the High Court are seldom as total as this one. . . . [The President] simply assumed the power to define on his own when a coequal branch of government is at work. . . . ‘I refuse to take no for an answer,’ he justified his behavior at a campaign event the day after the appointments. Democrats ran the Senate then and run it now. Mr. Obama merely thought the normal confirmation checks and balances too frustrating and preferred to install his union appointees without a debate. He should have read the Recess Appointments Clause before Justice Stephen Breyer did it for him.”

The WSJ editors emphasize, “The Framers did not vest the executive with the unilateral appointment authority that Mr. Obama thinks he is entitled to. They wanted to diffuse power across the federal government to protect individual liberty. Wilfully bypassing advice and consent also subverts political accountability, which a former constitutional law professor ought to know. Mr. Obama has thus strengthened the Senate, now armed with a judicial guide to preventing recess appointments: Presidents must take no for an answer. . . . But the true import of Noel Canning is that even liberal Justices are alarmed that Mr. Obama's executive law-making is visiting real damage on the Constitution. This will not be the last legal torpedo aimed at the hull of his increasingly willful Presidency.”

In an interview with Hugh Hewitt last night, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell discussed the importance of the Supreme Court’s ruling but expressed his skepticism that the president will actually learn a lesson about the limits of his powers. “[I]t’s pretty clear this President’s behavior with regard to recess appointments was so egregious that it produced a 9-0 Supreme Court decision, Justice Breyer, of all people, writing, in which the Court basically said the Senate gets to decide when it’s in session, not the President. The President had, in really an audacious move, decided that he got to determine when the Senate was in session when we were in fact following a procedure that we had followed for many years of coming in every three days in order to prevent recess appointments. And he, the imperial President Obama, decided he knew more than we did, and just, he tried to establish that he got to decide when we were in session.”

Hewitt asked, “Do you think this will humble him a little bit going into the last two years of his presidency?” Leader McConnell responded, “I wouldn’t bet on it. I think the only thing that’ll humble Barack Obama is the American people giving us a Republican Senate so we can, for the first time, actually challenge him. You know, he’s not vetoed a single bill in six years, and the reason for it is he never gets anything he doesn’t like, because of the United States Senate and Harry Reid and the Democratic majority. So I think the best way to push back against this president is for the American people to change the Senate . . . give us an opportunity to pass a budget, to pass appropriation bills, to actually restrict the funding of some of this outrageous behavior not only on his part, but on the part of the various agencies, EPA, for example, that are causing this persistent joblessness in the country.”

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