Both former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) and former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) support effectively rigging the federal judiciary to ensure that it hands down results they approve of. Yesterday, Santorum proposed banishing the Ninth Circuit’s judges — who he views as too liberal — to Guam. Not to be outdone, Gingrich wants to abolish the Ninth Circuit, thumb his nose at court decisions he disagrees with and wage a campaign of intimidation against judges who he disagrees with. So it’s a bit jarring to hear both men accuse President Obama of failing to respect the rule of law at recent campaign stops because of the president’s recent recess appointments:
- Santorum: “I would lay the lumber and say, you either withdraw these appointments — you are not above the law Mr. President. The law says you cannot do this. I hope the Senate has the backbone to shut the Senate down and say you will repeal these nominees or we are doing nothing. If the rule of law means nothing in this country, then why are we meeting?”
- Gingrich: “I hope the Congress will commit itself to defund the National Labor Relations Board until the president agrees to operate in a lawful way, and to go through the process of senatorial confirmation, and to put the NLRB back into a lawful position. [...] As of today, this president has proved a total willingness to violate the law and to impose an imperial presidency.”
Watch it:
As ThinkProgress previously explained, Obama’s recent recess appointments are firmly rooted in the Constitution. The president can make recess appointments when, as Alexander Hamilton explained, the Senate is not in “session for the appointment of officers.” Right now, the Senate is not around to confirm nominees and it hasn’t been so since December 23.
Moreover, as the Bush Justice Department’s top constitutional lawyer explained in 2010, the Senate cannot, as its Republican members now claim, prevent recess appointments by having a single senator pretend to do work for a few seconds every three days. During such sham sessions, “no business can be conducted, and the Senate is not capable of acting on the president’s nominations. That means the Senate remains in ‘recess’ for purposes of the recess appointment power, despite the empty formalities of the individual senators who wield the gavel in pro forma sessions.”
Simply put, the rule of law has nothing to fear from Barack Obama, but it is has a whole lot more to fear from presidential candidates who think they have the power to rig the federal courts.
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