June 15, 2012

Opinion About Recess Appointments is “Eyes Only” — And That Specifically Doesn’t Include Your Eyes

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Marcy Wheeler alerts us to a document posted today by Charlie Savage of the New York Times about the authority of the president to make recess appointments even when the Senate is conducting brief pro forma sessions in order to pretend that it’s not in recess. The Office of Legal Counsel weighed in on this several months ago, concluding that Obama could indeed ignore these sham sessions, but Savage submitted a FOIA request for other legal opinions on this issue. This is not an issue of national security, just a legal skirmish between branches of government, but when OLC finally produced a 2004 opinion written by Jack Goldsmith, here’s what it looked like:

“Next up,” says Marcy, “the Administration is going to start redacting Civics textbooks, because the workings of government are so terribly sensitive.”

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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