Last Call For The Taste Of Freedom

Freedom Industries, the company that poisoned the water supply for 300,000 West Virginians with its coal chemical leak last week, has officially filed for bankruptcy protection.

Freedom Industries Inc., facing multiple lawsuits and state and federal investigations after the Jan. 9 spill, filed a Chapter 11 petition with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of West Virginia. 

Company president Gary Southern signed the paperwork, which lists the company's assets and liabilities as a range — both between $1 million and $10 million. It says the company has at least 200 creditors and owes its top 20 creditors $3.66 million. 

The water was tainted after a chemical used to clean coal leaked from a storage tank and then a containment area at a facility owned by Freedom Industries. The water ran into the Elk River, contaminating the state's largest water system. 

The bankruptcy document says the leaky storage tank appears to have been pierced through its base by some sort of object. It also says a current theory for the hole is that a local water line that broke near the Charleston plant could have made the ground beneath the storage tank freeze in the cold days before the spill.

No doubt the company will get a nice Chapter 11 deal at taxpayer expense, while taxpayers also pay for the cleanup, and the company will emerge from bankruptcy with immunity to all those lawsuits and will be able to get back in the business of awesome coal chemicals by say, this time next year.

Business as usual, because America, where corporations are protected at all costs.  People, on the other hand, well, not so much.

Wisconsin's Working For No Weekends

As I mentioned in StupidiNews on Wednesday, Wisconsin Republicans want to get rid of the 40 hour work week.

The measure's authors, Sen. Glenn Grothman of West Bend and Mark Born of Beaver Dam, say the bill brings Wisconsin in line with federal law, gives workers a way to make extra money and employers a way to boost production. But Democrats and labor leaders insisted bosses would use the bill to force their employees to work longer and effectively erase the weekend. 

"Even God said rest on the seventh day," said David Reardon, secretary-treasurer for Teamsters Local 662, a union that represents about 10,000 workers across various industries in west-central and east-central Wisconsin, including manufacturing, truck driving, public workers and food service workers. "I would hate to see that Republican bill pass. Some employers would really take advantage of that." 

Current Wisconsin law requires employers who own or operate factories or retail stores to give their workers at least 24 consecutive hours off every seven days. Under Grothman and Born's proposal, workers could volunteer to work seven straight days without a rest day. 

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state's largest business organization, brought the idea to them, the two Republicans said. The organization was doing a study on discrepancies between federal and state law and discovered federal law imposes no such limits on consecutive work days as long as minimum wage and overtime payment requirements are met, Born said.

"Volunteer".  Sure.

Rep. Cory Mason, D-Racine, called the legislation a "slap in the face to ordinary working folks in Wisconsin." 

"Workers fought long and hard for a 40-hour work week and the weekend," Mason said. "People deserve at least a day off a week. It's a legal protection for a reason." 

Grothman dismissed their concerns, saying he's never heard of any business where pressuring employees to work extra hours has been a problem. He, too, insisted the bill would help workers make extra cash. 

"It's ridiculous when people want to work extra hours why Democrats would stand in the way of that," he said. "I don't know why some people want some people to remain poor."

 Ahh, but how quickly we forget that Republicans passed legislation to eliminate overtime pay last May.

The bill would amend long-standing labor law by allowing private-sector employers to offer compensatory time off in lieu of time-and-a-half pay for overtime. Employers and workers are supposed to agree on the arrangement, but there is nothing to stop an employer from discriminating against those who prefer payment by cutting back on their overtime hours. Nor would employers face any real deterrent against forcing unpaid overtime on workers who fear losing their jobs if they object. The recourse for coerced workers would be to sue, a far-fetched and unaffordable option for most people. 

For employers, then, the bill is a way to impose extra work at no additional cost, effectively shifting what would otherwise be worker pay into corporate profits.

So imagine if both laws were in effect in Wisconsin:  Your boss could say "I need you to work this weekend. You won't get any overtime pay.  In fact, you won't get any pay at all for it.  You'll get comp time, which I don't have to let you actually take off and that you'll lose after a year.  So you'll end up working 60 hours this week and get paid for 40, or I'll fire you."

All your boss has to do is say "It was my understanding that they volunteered for extra hours and they didn't show up for work. Of course I fired them."  Oh well.

And yet that's exactly what Republicans want to make legal.

Because Republicans care about jobs and working class Americans.

Carolina Out Of My Mind

Just a gentle reminder that my home state of North Carolina is now under complete GOP control, and that they continue punishing those who traditionally vote for Democrats and will do so until they leave the state and become somebody else's problem.  Today's target:  those making under $50,000 a year.

The 900,000 poorest working families in North Carolina just got another tax hike from the conservatives who swept state legislature elections in 2010. 

The change took effect at the beginning of 2014, meaning that the taxes those families file this spring will be the last to feature the state’s tax break for the working poor. The provision, known as the Earned Income Tax Credit or EITC, will also be 10 percent less generous in its final year. State-level EITCs work by tacking on an additional benefit to the federal EITC, and the law repealing North Carolina’s EITC for 2014 also cut the credit from 5 percent to 4.5 percent of the federal benefit. 

In order to qualify for the federal or state-level tax credit, tax filers must earn less than about $50,000. The goal of the credit is to buoy the incomes of working people whose employers pay them too little to provide the economic stability that having a job is supposed to ensure. Many conservatives who oppose other policies to boost poor peoples’ income, such as minimum wage hikes, support the EITC as an alternative way of keeping working people out of poverty without interfering with how private businesses operate. 

But that argument didn’t carry the day among North Carolina Republicans, and lawmakers slashed and then eliminated the state’s EITC during last year’s legislative session. That change was overshadowed by the GOP’s broader changes to the basic shape of the income tax codein the state to favor the rich and harm the rest.

So yes, Republicans have no problem raising taxes on those who can afford it the least to give tax breaks to the wealthiest.  North Carolina is now under a flat income tax of 5.8%, saving those making six figures or more thousands and those making seven figures tens of thousands in taxes.

In turn, that tax burden, along with the elimination of the state's Earned Income Tax Credit, just jacked up income taxes on the poor, big time.

Now combine this with the state's new draconian cuts to unemployment insurance in order to get the unemployed to leave the state and become someone else's problem.

"We had the ninth most generous unemployment compensation in the country and we were having a lot of people move here, frankly, especially in urban areas to get unemployment and then work other sectors and survive. So,people were moving here because of our very generous benefits, and then of course, we had more debt. So I think, personally, more people got off unemployment and either got jobs or moved back to where they were going or came from and quit the migration as much because of unemployment. We’ve seen this in other states where the benefits are very high, it could draw people from outside the state."

What happened of course is that since North Carolina now has the worst unemployment insurance in the country as of last summer, in turn they now have one of the highest rates of workers leaving the job market completely.  What Republicans have managed to do is drive people out of the job market and into government programs.  That's happening across the country, but it's happening faster in NC.

The GOP goal is to make being poor so awful that the poor just vanish, move away, or who knows?  Die, maybe?

Either way, they're not the NC GOP's problem anymore.

Last Call For Volunteering Out Of Obamacare

Tennessee is sure gonna fix that Obama boy's wagon, I'll tell ya.  Republicans are gonna make Obamacare illegal in the state, then what are you gonna do about THAT, Obama?  Actually, nobody seems to know what the next step is, because apparently the law would actually make it illegal for state-run hospitals or UT system hospitals to accept or even treat Obamacare patients.

Health insurance exchanges established under President Barack Obama's signature law would be illegal under legislation proposed Wednesday by Republicans aiming to prevent state agencies from carrying out the mandates of the health overhaul. 

Sen. Mae Beavers of Mt. Juliet and Rep. Mark Pody of Lebanon held a news conference to announce the measure that seeks to prohibit any cooperation by the state or its agencies in implementing or administering the federal law. 

"The federal government does not have constitutional authority to commandeer state and local governments to enforce or implement these federal health care mandates," Beavers said. "This legislation takes a very strong stand to resist this federal overreach of power." 

Except for the part where both the legislative branch and judicial branch gave the executive branch this power.

The legislation would ban new health insurance exchanges established under the law. So far, more than 36,000 Tennesseans have signed up for coverage under the exchanges. More than 2 million people had enrolled through the end of the year, according to the most recent nationwide statistics.

Sponsors say they haven't talked to the governor's administration about the proposal or officials with TennCare, the state's Medicaid program that provides health care for 1.2 million Tennesseans. 

"I'm sure they'll come to see us," Beavers said.

And what of the thousands of people who have insurance from the exchange?  Well, that's somebody else's problem, apparently.  Sure hope they don't get sick.  It'll be illegal to use their insurance because, you know, black President.

Obamacare Isn't Going Anywhere

Josh Marshall makes the case that the battle over Obamacare is done, and the GOP lost.

It's simply too late to undo what happened in March 2010.

To be clear, the program is still trying to make up ground lost in the first blundering two months of the roll out. And the near-term politics for Democrats may still be bad. But all the efforts at sabotage - trying to convince young people not to sign up, trying to scare people that they'd have their identities stolen, trying to prevent so-called 'navigators' from helping people enroll, refusing to set up state-based exchanges, opting out of Medicaid expansion and generally trying to scare the crap out of people with death panels and everything else so they wouldn't sign up. All had one aim: undermine enrollment to force what health care economists call a risk pool death spiral. 

That's when you've got too high a percentage of the old and sick to spread the cost of payouts. Without more young and healthy people, there's no way to effectively spread the risk. Then you have to raise premiums. So the logic of holding coverage is undermined for all but the really,really sick. And pretty soon the whole thing just blows up. 

That was the aim. But it didn't work. Relatively little noticed this week, we got the first look at the demographic breakdown of the first round of sign ups (those through Dec. 28th, 2013). They weren't great. 24% of enrollees were 18 to 34. The administration was and is aiming to have 40% of enrollees in that category. 

But that's not the end of the story. A key Kaiser Foundation study recently found that the key threshold for Obamacare success was 25% of enrollees in that age group. At that number you could have 1% to 2% premium rises. Not great, but not enough to fundamentally break the program and not enough to cause the dreaded 'death spiral.'

Republicans are confident that 2014 will bring a GOP Congress, and 2016 will bring a GOP President, assuring an Obamacare repeal.  I hate to break it to them that by 2016, it's going to be far, far too late.

But let them run on obstruction.

Meanwhile, In West Virginia...

Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink in Charleston.

Area emergency rooms are seeing an influx of patients reporting symptoms related to exposure to chemical-tainted water, despite the fact that West Virginia American Water has deemed water in many areas safe to use. 

Rahul Gupta, health officer for the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department, said 101 patients visited area emergency rooms in the 36-hour span ending at 7 a.m. Wednesday morning, reporting symptoms related to exposure to tainted water. He said 46 of those allegedly water-related emergency room visits occurred between 7 p.m. Tuesday night and 7 a.m. Wednesday morning. 

"What we are seeing when we talk to our partners in hospital systems are people with skin and eye irritation, rashes, nausea, upset stomach and diarrhea," Gupta said. 

All of those symptoms have been connected with exposure to crude MCHM, the chemical that leaked from a Freedom Industries storage tank Thursday into the Elk River, and then into West Virginia American Water's Charleston treatment plant a mile and a half downstream. 

Gupta said many of those patients reported using water that was deemed safe to use by West Virginia American Water. As of Wednesday afternoon, the "do not use" order has been lifted for 51,600 of the 100,000 customers affected by the chemical spill.

So a week later, the water's not safe, it's still making people sick, and who knows when it will actually be safe again.  Try thinking about going a week without water.  Would you be able to buy, purify, or get enough fresh water for a week for a family?  Would you even be able to purify it with this awful chemical in it?

But let's loosen regulations, right?  That's surely the answer.

StupidiNews!

• Ohio will become the first state to use a new two-drug solution for a lethal injection execution of a convicted death row inmate on Thursday.
• The US Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday over a Massachusetts law designed to create "free speech buffer zones" for protesters at abortion clinics.
• Charter Communications and NBC parent company Comcast are looking to jointly make a deal to buy Time Warner Cable, creating the largest cable company in the US.
• Police in Delhi, India have arrested two men in connection with a gang rape of a Danish tourist, promising additional arrests will be forthcoming.
• A new Johns Hopkins/Cal-Irvine study finds caffeine may help long-term memory functions such as retention.

Last Call For Running Against Obama

I'm not a huge Hillary Clinton fan and voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 primary in a state where he lost by 20+ points. I like 2016 speculation in January 2014 even less.  But if Brian Schweitzer of Montana thinks he has a chance in hell running in 2016 as the anti-Obama, he can go straight to hell and take his hopes with him.

Brian Schweitzer, the former two-term Democratic governor of Montana, is rarely speechless. Once he gets going on a topic, he’s almost impossible to stop. As he builds up steam, he’ll slap his knee to emphasize his points. He’ll slap your knee to emphasize his points. Good luck getting a word in edgewise for that follow-up question. 

But at the moment, Schweitzer is rubbing his chin, looking up at the ceiling, searching – unsuccessfully – for just the right words. The question was simple enough: Is there a single thing President Obama has done that you consider a positive achievement? 

Finally, he spoke. 

“My mother, God rest her soul, told me ‘Brian, if you can’t think of something nice to say about something change the subject,’” he said.
But he couldn’t help himself, slamming Obama’s record on civil liberties (the NSA revelations were “un-effing-believable”), his competency (“They just haven’t been very good at running things”), and above all, Obamacare (“It will collapse on its own weight”). 

Eventually, he paused to acknowledge Obama’s historic role as the first black president. But by that standard, Obama’s usefulness ended the day he took the oath of office.

So your plan to win in 2016 is to alienate the Democrats who voted for Barack Obama.  Twice.

Please take your Big Sky country boy act back to Helena, bro.  We're not interested.  If you can't be half-assed to come up with one thing this President did that you liked, I've got a name for you.

Republican.

Steve M makes a similar point about who Schweitzer is playing to:

But what makes this whole package hard to sell is the fact that Schweitzer is making the attack so personal and ad hominem. Do you know what Barack Obama's job approval rating is among Democrats right now? It's 75% according to a December poll from CNN, 78%according to a December CBS poll. It sure seems as if there's disillusionment among Democratic voters, but a lot of Democrats are clearly still loyal, while others are no worse than ambivalent -- they're frustrated and disappointed, maybe, but they're still essentially on Obama's side, even if a lot of what he does (or fails to do) is maddening.

Jamelle Bouie has more:

If Schweitzer is an unlikely choice for the Democratic nomination, it has less to do with his low national profile, and everything to do with his pronounced Obama-skepticism. Black voters have their concerns with the Obama administration, but the president is held in high esteem. Which is to say that, if you’re going to distance yourself from the administration, you have to do so without without attacking Obama as a figure. Otherwise, you’ve alienated African Americans and crippled your bid for the nomination.

Good luck winning the primaries running as a red state white guy who can't think of one nice thing to say about President Obama.  The good news?  Watch carefully who backs Schweitzer from the "left".  It's a dead giveaway they're no friends of Democrats, liberals, or you.  Allahpundit over at Hot Air is hoping Schweitzer can cause as much damage to Democrats as possible, for example.

After all, Ralph Nader has his day in the sun too, and look where that got us.

The Right Climate For A Split Derision

Can we put to bed this absolute nonsense about the scientific community being "split" over man-made global warming?

Scientists say climate change is happening and that we’re exacerbating it. Don’t believe me? Check out this beautifully simple pie chart that illustrates just how rare climate denial in the scientific community is:James Powell

That’s right. Only one — ONE — of the 9,137 authors of peer-reviewed climate change articles rejected anthropogenic global warming. Geochemist James Powell did the research on publications from November 2012 and December 2013. (But if a year-long sample isn’t good enough for you, Powell previously examined 21 years of peer-reviewed literature and found that only 24 out of 13,950 articles — or two-tenths of a percent — came out and rejected human-caused climate change.) 

The one guy that did dissent:  a Russian who notes that measures to rein in global warming would hurt his country's exports of oil and gas.

The industry that has sprung up to stop action on global warming is sponsored by energy corporations collectively worth hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars.  It's all lies and bought politicians, and its worked and will continue to work.

Right up until the disasters keep coming.

The Bridge Is On Fire And Now Covered In Lava

It just keeps getting worse for New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie with this whole bridge scandal cover-up.

Gov. Chris Christie was with the official who arranged the closure of local lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 11, 2013 — the third day of the closures, and well after they had triggered outrage from local officials beset by heavy traffic. 

It isn’t known what, if anything, Mr. Christie discussed with David Wildstein that day, when the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey official was among the delegation of Mr. Christie’s representatives who welcomed him to the site of the World Trade Center for the commemoration of the 12th anniversary of the terrorist attacks there. 

Mr. Christie’s office didn’t respond to questions about what he and Mr. Wildstein discussed. Mr. Wildstein did not respond to a request for comment.

So what's the big deal about that?  Well, it means Christie lied brazenly at his press conference last Thursday.

Also present with Mr. Christie that day were Bill Baroni, the authority’s deputy executive director, who was helping Mr. Wildstein manage the fallout from the closures among local officials, subpoenaed documents show. Also there was David Samson, the Port Authority chairman and close Christie ally, who has said he didn’t learn of the lane closures and traffic in Fort Lee, N.J., until an email from a New York port official ordered the lane closures reversed. Messrs. Samson and Baroni didn’t respond to requests for comment. 

Mr. Christie addressed Mr. Wildstein in a news conference last week, saying he had not encountered him “in a long time.”

Ooooooops.  In other words, Christie lied flat out when he said he wasn't aware of the lane closures, because he met with the guy who made the lane closures, about the lane closures, during the lane closures. He then lied about meeting with Wildstein.

He's in a lot of trouble here, folks.  And this won't be pretty.

StupidiNews!

• The FDA is advising doctors to stop prescribing acetaminophen for pain in doses larger than 325mg, citing increased risk of liver damage.
• Wisconsin Republicans are introducing legislation that would get rid of the five-day work week for employees, and keep state offices open seven days a week.
• A Japan Airline Boeing 787 Dreamliner remains grounded in Tokyo as investigators look into the plane's electrical system for possible fire hazard issues, similar to issues in 2012 and 2013.
• Germany's Deutsche Bank has suspended at least two currency traders on suspicion of attempting to rig international currency exchange rates.
• Republicans are claiming victory over light bulbs as part of the 2014 budget deal, finally repealing the part of President Bush's 2007 law mandating efficiency standards for light bulb energy use.

Last Call For Orange Water

Of course House Speaker John Boehner wasn't planning on bringing up any legislation that might strengthen water regulations after last week's massive West Virginia coal chemical spill that contaminated the water for 300,000 people.  Why, that's just silly.

"We have enough regulations on the books. What the administration ought to be doing is their jobs," Boehner said at a weekly press conference on Capitol Hill. 

While Boehner said that somebody ought to be held accountable for the failure in oversight, the Speaker explained his party was focused on eliminating "cumbersome, over-the-top" regulations that were "costing the American people jobs." 

The site's tanks, owned by Freedom Industries, don't fall under an inspection program and the chemicals stored there weren't considered hazardous enough to require permits before they leaked into the Elk River nearby.

Huh.  The administration should be "doing their jobs" huh.

The site of a West Virginia chemical spill that contaminated the water supply for 300,000 people operated largely outside government oversight, highlighting gaps in regulations and prompting questions on whether local communities have a firm grasp on potential threats to drinking water. 

The storage facility owned by Freedom Industries Inc. on the banks of the Elk River was subject to almost no state and local monitoring, interviews and records show. The industrial chemical that leaked into the river, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, isn't closely tracked by federal programs. A state regulator had said earlier that, before last week's spill, environmental inspectors hadn't visited the site since 1991. On Monday, the state said it had located another inspection from 2002 related to a remediation project done by the site's previous owner.

It's almost like Republicans are doing everything they can to weaken regulations and to starve the agencies supposedly in charge of oversight so that they can't do their job.  After all, inspections of underground tanks full of dangerous polluting chemicals (being stored near a river that provides drinking water to hundreds of thousands) occurring more than once every 20-25 years or so is burdensome on our poor corporate masters.

As far as the folks in West Virginia who still can't drink the water, well, America and Freedom.

Meanwhile, here in Cincy...

Cincinnati plans to shut down intake valves along the Ohio River to protect the city's drinking water from a chemical spill in West Virginia. 

Mayor John Cranley announced Monday that the valves will be shut down for at least 20 hours beginning Tuesday night. Cranley says that will allow the water to pass the city without any chemicals entering the drinking supply. 

The city plans to use a reserve of 60 hours of treated water, built up specially following the West Virginia spill.

So yes, this affects more than just the people of West Virginia, but people in multiple states.  Like Southwestern Ohio.  You know, where John Bohner's district is.  Perhaps Orange Julius should give a damn, as this is affecting his own constituents who live and work in Cincinnati and Dayton and get their water from the Ohio River.

The Core Of Cory Booker

Over at TNR, Ryan Cooper asks why Sen. Cory Booker is "trying to undermine President Obama" on Iran sanctions despite last weekend's agreement to move forward with a six-month interim deal starting Monday.

American and Iranian negotiators came to an agreement Sunday on a six-month deal to put the Iranian nuclear program on hold in exchange for easing sanctions slightly, in the hopes of reaching a more permanent agreement in the interim. Meanwhile, at last count, 59 senators are supporting a bill that would impose new sanctions—among them Cory Booker, the brand-new New Jersey senator. President Barack Obama has threatened to veto it. 

The bill's supporters insist that they're simply trying to improve the U.S. negotiating posture. On Twitter, Booker insisted that he favors a peaceful solution, adding, "I'm 4 additional sanctions if current negotiations fail 2 start or fail 2 work." A senior aide told Joshua Hersh and Ryan Grim, "The goal isn't to disrupt things, it's to make Iran even more willing to make serious concessions by making them aware of what will happen if they don't." 

This isn't credible. First of all, the administration presumably has some idea of what's best for its negotiating position, and it has been lobbying furiously against new sanctions. Second, the timing is suspect—these senators hurriedly drew up this bill only after the breakthrough in negotiations was announced. Third, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif himself said new sanctions would signal a lack of good faith that would kill any long-term agreement. 

No, this bill is an attempt to kill the Iran deal, whether Booker and company admit that or not. No other explanation makes half as much sense.

Yes and no.  Booker's "good cop, bad cop" explanation is overly simplistic, but so is "He's undermining the President".  The reality is a lot more complex.

This is Booker's first major Israel vote as a Senator, and like it or not, Democrat or not, a Senator from New York or New Jersey in post-9/11 America is going to take the hard line again Iran, even if he's a dove like Booker.  This is as much a regional political reality as Jay Rockefeller being nice to King Coal, Mary Landreiu and Mark Begich being nice to offshore drilling, and Harry Reid (or Booker himself now) respecting the casino gaming industry.

Secondly, I have a problem calling Cory Booker specifically out over this.  Why not the other Senate Dems backing this bill, including Schumer, Gillibrand, and Menendez?  No offense, but if the issue is bowing to AIPAC, Schumer and Menendez in particular have a hell of a lot more to answer for.  Booker just got to the Senate...and he never would have if he didn't toe this particular line.

Cooper ends with this:

The activist left has been disappointed by much of the Obama presidency, wrong-footed in the face of an austerian coalition between the center and an energized, reactionary right. But from New York to Los Angeles, there is clearly some new momentum on the left. If these Senate Dems manage to kill the Iran negotiations, or push us into yet another Middle East catastrophe, none of them will ever be president.

He's correct on that account. The activist left was disappointed in Obama from day one, of course. But I'm going to say that if Iran wanted to kill these negotiations, they'd find an excuse to do it, and hanging that on Cory Booker's neck is almost as bad as continuing to be disappointed in President Obama, who got this deal done in the first place.

I don't agree with it.  But that's how the game works.  You can either play the game and try to change it, or let the Republicans run it.  I'm going to go with the former.

A Supreme Amount Of Trouble

It looks like President Obama's power to make recess appointments is about to have some very strict limits placed on it by SCOTUS if Monday's oral arguments are anything to go by.  Lyle Denniston:

Seeming a bit troubled about allowing the Senate to have an on-off switch on the president’s power to temporarily fill vacant government posts, the Supreme Court on Monday indicated that it may yet allow just that. Even some of the Justices whose votes the government almost certainly needs to salvage an important presidential power were more than skeptical. 

A ninety-three-minute hearing on the Constitution’s grant of power to the president to make short-term appointments to fill vacancies was at times a somewhat anxious exploration of whether history or constitutional text should govern the extent of that power. On balance, text seemed to be winning out, and that appeared to favor the Senate more than the White House. 

Perhaps the most unfortunate moment for presidential authority was a comment by Justice Stephen G. Breyer that modern Senate-White House battles over nominations were a political problem, not a constitutional problem. Senators of both parties have used the Constitution’s recess appointment provisions to their own advantage in their “political fights,” Breyer said, but noted that he could not find anything in the history of the clause that would “allow the president to overcome Senate resistance” to nominees.

If Justice Breyer is openly saying that he can't find any reason for the President's power of recess appointments to not be limited to strictly the time between Congresses rather than whenever Congress isn't actively in session, then any recess appointments the President may wish to make will be limited to a few days every two years, the next window being in January 2015 and that's it.

Should the GOP get control of the Senate, nobody will get confirmed or appointed, and Republicans will be free to keep executive branch positions unfilled for two years.

And there won't be a thing the President will be able to do.

That should scare the hell out of you.

This particular battle looks to be over before it even began.

StupidiNews!

• Congressional leader from both parties say they've worked out an agreement to keep the government open through September 30th.
• Newly sworn-in Virginia Gov. Terry McAullife's first day on the job included an executive order protecting LGBT state employees from discrimination.
• In an effort to win back consumers after a massive credit card security breach over the holidays, retailer Target is turning to a new public relations campaign and security overhaul.
• Japanese distillery giant Suntory is looking to by Jim Beam Brands in order to get its hand on Maker's Mark and the US bourbon market in a reported $16 billion deal.
• Codenamed "Threshhold", Microsoft's Windows 9 could be hitting store shelves as early as April 2015 as the software maker zeroes in on Google and Apple.