Feed and Forage Act For All Others

Here is a comment on President Obama's recent Recess Appointments.  It seems Law Professor Lawrence Tribe is suggesting that the President's duty to faithfully execute the laws creates a virtual Feed and Forage Act for all the other parts of the Executive Branch, not otherwise covered by the 1861 Law.

The blog post author, Jazz Shaw ends with this:

Of course, all of this skips past the original vision of the power of recess appointments which I’ve long opposed in the modern era.  Yoo notes the same issue, which is that the founders were making these rules in a time when Congress would frequently be out of town, scattered around the country, and it could take extraordinary measures to gather them all together on short notice.  That justified the occasional recess appointment, but it’s simply not the case today.  Unfortunately, absent a constitutional amendment, there’s no getting around it.

I believe these recess appointments dodgy as they are, will not receive any blowback, except rhetorical, and that from a few Republicans.

The Members of the Senate lack that sense of themselves as a corporate body, which, in older days, would have caused them, as a corporate body, to take offense.  Maybe the US Senate needs more old, cranky, members, sure in their security and proud of who they are.  In other words, where is Robert Byrd (D-WV)?  Until the Senate regains a sense of itself we will be less well off, politically.

Regards  —  Cliff