Supreme Court Rebukes Obama Lawlessness

My article from the June 27, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Supreme Court Rebukes Obama Lawlessness

By Matthew Vadum

In a humiliating rebuke to President Obama, the Supreme Court affirmed in a labor relations case yesterday that there continue to be constitutionally prescribed limits to the powers of the nation’s Chief Executive.

The Court invalidated three recess appointments the president made in an attempt to unconstitutionally manipulate federal labor relations policy.

Justices held unanimously in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning Thursday that Obama overreached on Jan. 4, 2012 when he recess-appointed three members to the NLRB without bothering to wait for the U.S. Senate to recess. Obama’s goal was to pack the under-staffed NLRB with likeminded leftists and give the board the quorum it previously lacked to conduct official business.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) lauded the Court’s clampdown on “President Obama’s unlawful abuse of the president’s recess appointments power.”

“This marks the 12th time since January 2012 that the Supreme Court has unanimously rejected the Obama administration’s calls for greater federal executive power,” Cruz said.

A delighted Michael Savage said on his radio show: “America just won a 9-to-0 victory over an emerging dictatorship.” (The full opinion is available at the Supreme Court’s website.)

In this post-constitutional era in which the Supreme Court gave its imprimatur to the nonsensical ruling in NFIB v. Sebelius, the vile pro-Obamacare decision that has been aptly compared to an infamous slavery-reinforcing ruling that helped to precipitate civil war, it remains to be seen what, if any, other limits to governmental power the Court will see fit to recognize. Ben Shapiro correctly characterized the tortuously reasoned Obamacare decision as “the greatest single judicial limitation on American liberty since Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), in which the Supreme Court ruled that under the Constitution, blacks were not human beings.”

The lawsuit disposed of yesterday was brought by Noel Canning of Washington state, the owner of a soft drink bottling and distribution company who was displeased by a ruling the board made against him after its quorum was restored by the purported recess appointments. The NLRB found that Canning’s firm engaged in unfair labor practices by declining to sign a collective bargaining agreement. Canning argued the board had no legal authority to render the decision because the president’s recess appointments, made when the U.S. Senate did not consider itself to be in recess, were improper.

Will SCOTUS Reverse Obama’s Recess Appointment Power Grab?

My article from today's FrontPage Magazine:

Will SCOTUS Reverse Obama’s Recess Appointment Power Grab?

By Matthew Vadum

Speculation is running rampant in the nation’s capital that the Supreme Court is poised to strike down three purported recess appointments that President Obama used to unconstitutionally manipulate federal labor relations policy.

During oral arguments in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning on Monday, the justices seemed uncomfortable with Obama’s Jan. 4, 2012 overreach in which he recess-appointed three members to the NLRB without bothering to wait for the U.S. Senate to recess. Obama’s goal was to pack the under-staffed federal body with likeminded leftists and give the NLRB the quorum it previously lacked to conduct official business. A defeat for Obama in this closely watched case could call into question every order issued by the NLRB since the date the appointments were made.

Incidentally, the NLRB itself shouldn’t even exist. It is a socialist anachronism left over from the New Deal that Obama uses to create new rules and regulations without having to go the normal route and ask Congress to pass a law. Obama’s toadies at the NLRB are hellbent on making America more like bureaucratic, dysfunctional Europe where labor disruptions and union violence are everyday occurrences.

During oral arguments this week nearly every member of the high court questioned the constitutionality of Obama’s NLRB appointments that were apparently carried out contrary to Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution.

Chief Justice John Roberts defended the Senate’s constitutional prerogative to approve nominees as a vital check on an out-of-control executive branch. Senators “have an absolute right not to confirm nominees that the president submits,” he said.

Left-leaning Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, told government counsel, ”The history is entirely on the Senate’s side, not your side.”