Photo Credit: Daily Signal By Elizabeth Slattery.

Today, in a blow to the Obama administration, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that President Obama’s “recess appointments” to the National Labor Relations Board violated the Constitution in NLRB v. Noel Canning.

Art. II, section 2, clause 3 of the Constitution allows the president to “fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate.” On Jan. 4, 2012, President Obama made several recess appointments even though the Senate had been convening “pro forma” sessions every three days. These appointments were challenged in a labor dispute before the NLRB, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck them down as unconstitutional.

Today, the Court, in an opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer, held the president may make recess appointments to existing vacancies during intrasession (breaks during a session of Congress) and intersession (breaks between sessions of Congress) recesses of a “sufficient length.” The Court determined the vacancy need not occur during the recess, which upholds the broad practice dating back to the presidency of James Madison.

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / JONATHAN ERNSTSupreme Court Unanimously Rejects Obama Recess Appointments

By Ed Morrissey.

The Supreme Court dropped a huge bomb on the Obama administration, unanimously rebuking the President for arrogating to himself the determination of when Congress is in session for the purpose of making recess appointments. According to reports on the opinion, the court may have taken a middle path on what a recess actually is, toning down one appellate court ruling that only allowed for recess appointments between formal sessions:

The US Supreme Court today limited a president’s power to make recess appointments when the White House and the Senate are controlled by opposite parties, scaling back a presidential authority as old as the republic.

The case arose from a political dispute between President Obama and Senate Republicans, who claimed he had no authority to put three people on the National Labor Relations Board in January 2012 when the Senate was out of town.

He used a president’s power, granted by the Constitution, to “fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate.” But the Republicans said the Senate was not in recess at the time the appointments were made, because every three days a senator went into the chamber, gaveled it to order, and then immediately called a recess.

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Photo Credit: TownHallOver the past few years immigration reform advocates have successfully gotten major news outlets to officially change their policy on using “illegal immigrant” to describe, well, illegal immigrants. In 2013 the Associated Press amended its styleguide, instructing reporters to no longer refer to people as “illegal.” Also off limits: illegal alien, an illegal, illegals, or undocumented. Rather, AP said to “specify wherever possible how someone entered the country illegally and from where.”

This change wasn’t limited to AP, of course, and other media outlets quickly followed suit. Now, however, NRO has noticed that immigration reform advocates are beginning to refer to illegal immigrants as “undocumented Americans.”

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Photo Credit: TownHall Left-wing law professor Jonathan Turley baffled his MSNBC cohorts on Wednesday when he claimed House Republicans have a real case in their lawsuit against President Obama for executive overreach, explaining that “there’s no license for going it alone in our system.”

On Wednesday, House Republican Speaker John Boehner filed a lawsuit on behalf of the institution of Congress accusing President Obama of abusing the power of the White House to unconstitutionally rewrite domestic laws.

Turley, a George Washington University law professor who supports much of President Obama’s agenda, has already opposed this White House before — most notably on the lack of notification to Congress before the transfer of five dangerous Taliban prisoners from Gitmo.

And after being asked by MSNBC host Steve Kornacki whether Boehner had “any kind of a case” with today’s new lawsuit, Turley remained consistent.

“I think there is a case against the president for exceeding his authority,” he declared. “I happen to agree with the president on many of his priorities and policies, but as I testified in Congress I think he has crossed the constitutional line.”

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