[mburbank]

The side of the really autistic devil.

And his side of the balance is making the appointment. He can make appointment after apointment he knows won't go through and take the gamble that the constant rejection of his appointments makes the congress look worse than it makes him look.

OR he can appoint people he honestly thinks might be qualified and challenge congress to defy him.

He can also make recess apointments. He can do it to fill a position that desperately needs filling and as executive he feels filling the position is more important than confressional oversite. That's a hard case to make when you're appointing the ambassador to Belgium.

Or, legally, he can abuse his authority and make a recess appointement as a way of saying 'fuck you'. He is totally allowed to do that under current law. But when the opposition party or congress points out this this is the action of an asshole who cares more about saying fuck you than acknowledging the oversight role of congress, the President has no choice but to eat it, or make a convincing case. W has a big problem of wanting to say fuck you and have everybody treat it like he kissed a baby. Legally he can, and does, go right to the wall (and argubaly over and under it as well) with his authority to say "I'm the decider, that's why." But I would say his loss of congress and his lousy approval numbers that people are tired of it. It doesn't look as if he cares. Sounds like the Pres has a lot of power in the checks and balances game.

Oh, and Vetos. He has those. Not on appointment rejections, but on all the stuff congress decides. He checks their decisions, congress checks his. I swear to the sweet baby Jesus, the only part of my public school educumation that was any good was the basic civics portion of social studies, and they seem to have replaced it with Kwanza Appreciattion and Health ed classes taugfht by gym teachers.