Tuesday’s votes covered the last of the seven nominees that were part of a bipartisan deal earlier this month in which some Republicans agreed to end stalling tactics.
Tag Archives: NLRB
Third federal appeals court invalidates Obama NLRB recess appointments
However, Obama on Tuesday nominated two new NLRB appointees to replace those opposed by Senate Republicans, clearing the way for a confirmation vote next week and perhaps making the Supreme Court review unnecessary.
Reid Goes Nuclear For Union Bosses
By Phil Kerpen
In 2005, Senate Republicans floated the idea of altering Senate rules to eliminate the filibuster for judicial nominees. The proposal, dubbed the nuclear option, involved breaking Senate rules to change Senate rules. (The rules require a two-thirds vote for rules changes, but the nuclear option changes the rules by simple majority.) Democrats fought back against it furiously. Harry Reid led the fight, saying on the Senate floor: “I would never, ever consider breaking the rules to change the rules.” Well, adjust your clocks to “never.” Reid is now poised to execute the nuclear option.
Reid is willing to gut the filibuster at the behest of union bosses who want to keep the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) stacked with corrupt union lawyers who will continue to rig the rules to make it easier to force workers into unions. Even worse, the specific NLRB nominees Reid wants to break Senate rules to approve were already illegally appointed by President Obama.
The same media that was howling when Republicans considered the nuclear option are tying themselves into knots to justify it now that Democrats are in control. Consider this astonishing deception from NBC News: “The NLRB nominations have been pending so long that President Obama used so-called recess appointments — appointing board members while the Senate was out of session — to allow the board to function.”
“Pending so long”? President Obama named his NLRB nominees on December 14, 2011 and installed them via putative recess appointment on January 4, 2012. That’s 21 days. Some of the days were, obviously, major holidays. The nominees never filled out questionnaires or even underwent background checks. They didn’t meet with any Senate Republicans, who nonetheless are blamed for obstructing them.
“While the Senate was out of session”? No. The Senate was in session; Senator Ben Cardin had gaveled in the new session of Congress just the day before.
D.C. Circuit Court Chief Judge David B. Sentelle wrote: “An interpretation of ‘the Recess’ that permits the President to decide when the Senate is in recess would demolish the checks and balances inherent in the advice-and-consent requirement, giving the President free rein to appoint his desired nominees at any time he pleases, whether that time be a weekend, lunch, or even when the Senate is in session and he is merely displeased with its inaction.”
The Supreme Court is almost certain to agree later this year.
You would think the Senate would, as an institution, recoil at the prospect of being effectively denied its constitutional prerogative of advice and consent. But for Senate Democrats, partisanship and dependence on union political muscle trump that concern.
Instead of nominating qualified members other than the ones he had already been rebuked in federal court for attempting to install illegally, Obama chose to renominate his illegal appointees and deliberately provoke confrontation. Reid is happily playing along, even to the point of nuclear escalation. Even though it means, as he described it as recently as 2008, the Senate as the Founders designed it would cease to exist.
All it …read more
Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney, 4/9/2013
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room
11:52 A.M. EDT
MR. CARNEY: Welcome, everyone. Thanks for your patience. I have a couple of quick announcements. As you may have seen already, President Obama is announcing his intent to nominate three members of the National Labor Relations Board — Mark Gaston-Pearce to serve another term as member and to be designated chairman. And then, Harry I. Johnson, III and Philip Miscimarra both to be members of the NLRB.
These nominations — if all, including the two that we’ve nominated prior, are acted on by the Senate — would bring the NLRB up to full operating level, ensuring that it continues to function and fulfill its responsibilities to look after workers’ rights. This would be a bipartisan board. The two nominees, Harry Johnson and Philip Miscimarra, are Republican nominees and you would have a balanced, bipartisan board, and we urge the Senate to move on those nominations efficiently.
Separately, I’d also like to say that this afternoon the Senate will vote to confirm Judge Patty Shwartz to the Third Circuit. Judge Shwartz was reported by the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 8, 2012, making her way to 397 days for what should be a bipartisan confirmation vote. After her expected confirmation, there will still be 14 other judicial nominees awaiting floor votes. Of these 14, 13 were approved by the Judiciary Committee unanimously, and five nominees would fill judicial emergencies. They have been waiting on the Senate floor for an average of 67 days for a vote. That’s nearly twice as long as President Bush’s judicial nominees. We urge the Senate to move on these nominees without further delay.
Julie.
Q Thank you. North Korea is urging all foreigners to evacuate South Korea, saying that the two countries are on the verge of a nuclear war. Does the U.S. take this latest threat seriously in any way? Or do you think that this is just more bluster?
MR. CARNEY: North Korea’s statement advising foreigners to make plans to evacuate Seoul is more unhelpful rhetoric that serves only to escalate tensions. This kind of rhetoric will only further isolate North Korea from the international community and we continue to urge the North Korean leadership to heed President Obama’s call to choose the path of peace and to come into compliance with its international obligations. We have seen this kind of bellicose rhetoric, these kinds of provocative statements consistently — obviously, in recent days and weeks — but also as part of a pattern of behavior that we’ve seen over the years from the North Korean leadership.
The end result of this kind of behavior has only been to further isolate North Korea from the rest of the world and to do harm to the North Korean …read more
No Timeout In Recess Appointment Battle Over NLRB's Authority
By Valerie Eifert, Contributor Employers and Acting National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Lafe Solomon continue to spar over the NLRB’s authority in the wake of the D.C. Circuit’s 2013 Noel Canning decision invalidating President Obama’s recess appointments of three NLRB Members. Attacks on the Board’s authority have morphed into an all-out offensive by employers to invalidate hundreds of adverse NLRB decisions and to freeze the Board from deciding current cases. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
The Employment Insider: NLRB Grounds Union Challenge to Boeing's Code of Conduct
By Joel Barras, Contributor In another example of unions trying to push the boundaries of recent NLRB restrictions on employment policies, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, Local 2001 (“Union”) recently challenged Boeing’s decade-old Code of Conduct. In a refreshing display of common sense, the NLRB General Counsel’s Office rejected that challenge, after concluding, in its Advice Memorandum, that Boeing’s Code of Conduct (contained in its Ethical Guidelines) did not violate the NLRA because employees were unlikely to read the Code of Conduct to restrict NLRA-protected concerted activities. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Employers hoping for an end to labor pains after NLRB picks ruled 'unconstitutional’
Over the last year, the National Labor Relations Board has made 341 rulings, including some that have prompted critics to call it the most activist, pro-worker board ever. And now that a federal court has ruled the current board was put together with unconstitutional recess appointments by President Obama, those holdings are suddenly in question.
Benghazi Attack Was Retaliation For Brennan’s Secret Al-Qaeda War
By Kris Zane
Many refer to the President of the United States, leader of the sole superpower in the world, as the most powerful person on the face of the Earth. It follows then that Barack Hussein Obama, as President, would be considered this person.
But that would be an incorrect conclusion. Even Obama with his “we can’t wait for Congress to act” meme, spurning the legislative branch, spurning the checks and balances the Founding Fathers put in place—even with Obama spurning the Courts in the recent NLRB ruling deeming his “recess” appointments unconstitutional, there is one man who wields more power than Obama: CIA appointee John Brennan.
How can that be? Brennan is man who is actually relatively low in the White House food chain, who is nothing more than an adviser to the President, with the title of Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.
Yet this man has a virtually unchecked amount of power—no, let us call it for what it is—unchecked power. Congress, the Courts, the CIA, even the Pentagon have no reign over this man as we shall see in a moment.
It was recently discovered that Brennan, running something akin to a fiefdom with his drone assassination program, has the power to decide who lives and who dies and doesn’t have to provide evidence to any entity that the “target” presents any threat to America—even if they are an American—even if the American is living in the United States!
Investigative Reporter Michael Isikoff uncovered a secret memo, entitled:
“Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al Qa’ida or An Associated Force.”
The memo gives the Obama Administration—in effect Brennan—the authority to kill any American citizen at anytime for any reason without proof, without due process, and with absolutely no oversight.
The key passage in the sixteen page memo is the following:
The condition that an operational leader present an “imminent” threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.
This was the basis for the drone strike against American-born al-Qaeda-linked terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki in September of 2011 in Yemen. And this was the basis of the murder of al-Awlaki’s sixteen-year-old son Abdulrahman, along with several other teenagers who were engaged in an outdoor barbecue. While it is debatable whether al-Awlaki as an American citizen should have received due process, it is doubtful that his son, murdered two weeks after al-Awlaki, had any connection to al-Qaeda.
But this unchecked power exercised by John Brennan is mild compared to what we learned with the recent release of an extensive book on the Benghazi consulate attack on September 11, 2012.
The book, Benghazi: The Definitive Report, released on February 12 makes the shocking claim that Obama’s chief counter terrorism officer, John Brennan, aside from having the authority to murder American citizens, has been waging a series of secret …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Western Journalism
Uncertainty From The DC Circuit's NLRB Decision Continues As litigation Over The Validity Of Recess Appointments Proliferates
By Jim Martin, Contributor The ripple effects continue from the D.C. Circuit’s decision in Noel Canning v. Nat’l Labor Relations Bd., declaring President Obama’s three “recess” appointments to the NLRB unconstitutional. While the Noel Canning decision’s immediate fate is uncertain, a Connecticut health care company, Healthbridge Management, petitioned Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for an emergency stay of an injunction seeking reinstatement of striking nurses on the ground that the Board’s authority was in doubt. Justice Ginsburg denied the stay, and the company then tried its luck with Justice Antonin Scalia, who submitted the stay request to the full court, and it was again denied. Whether any relief is there, the last chapter on Noel Canning likely will be written by the Supreme Court. The D.C. Circuit’s decision is in conflict with a 2004 en banc holding of the Eleventh Circuit. See Evans v. Stephens, 387 F.3d 1220 (11th Cir. 2004). The NLRB’s authority also is being litigated in at least 15 other cases in federal appellate courts across the country, with oral argument set in the Third and Fourth Circuits in March. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Employers Face Uncertainty as Supreme Court Twice Declines — For Now — to Enter Fray over Legality of Obama Recess Appointments to NLRB
By Gene Connors, Contributor In January 2012, President Obama bypassed the Senate and announced three “recess appointments” to the National Labor Relations Board, a majority of the five-person Board. The president had taken similar action in March 2010, when he placed two members on the Board by recess appointment. Since those appointments, the NLRB has repeatedly reversed or watered down decades-old Board decisional law, nearly always ruling “against” employers in doing so, and has taken steps to impose a number of new regulations on employers. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
GOP senator proposes bill that would freeze NLRB rules, decisions
Republican Sen. John Barrasso introduced legislation Wednesday that would freeze or overturn virtually every decision the National Labor Relations Board has made in the past year.
Court Rules Obama Appointments Are Unconstitutional
WASHINGTON – President Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate to fill vacancies on a labor relations panel, a federal appeals court panel ruled Friday.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that Obama did not have the power to make three recess appointments last year to the National Labor Relations Board.
The unanimous decision is an embarrassing setback for the president, who made the appointments after Senate Republicans spent months blocking his choices for an agency they contended was biased in favor of unions.
The ruling also throws into question Obama’s recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray’s appointment, also made under the recess circumstance, has been challenged in a separate case.
Obama claims he acted properly in the case of the NLRB appointments because the Senate was away for the holidays on a 20-day recess. But the three-judge panel ruled that the Senate technically stayed in session when it was gaveled in and out every few days for so-called “pro forma” sessions.
Will The NLRB's Protection Of Water Cooler Conversations Trump A Company's Right To Keep Its Investigations Confidential?
By Catherine Foti Over the past year, the National Labor Relations Board has issued a series of decisions that have significantly expanded the rights of non-supervisory employees, including non-unionized employees, to discuss information that many employers would consider confidential, and even post this confidential information on social media sites. This expansion includes an employee?s right to discuss the content of investigative interviews, even when an employer directs an employee to keep the interview confidential. Although the NLRB has yet to directly opine on the subject, these decisions may have serious implications for the corporate attorney-client privilege.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Technology
Congressional report accuses NLRB of advocating for big labor
The National Labor Relations Board — the federal agency tasked with protecting employees from unfair management or union practices — has become a biased advocate for big labor, according to a newly released congressional report.
Source: Fox News – Politics