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Sunday, January 8, 2012
Richard Cordray Nomination: Obama Recess Appointments Under ...
By Jeremy Pelofsky
WASHINGTON--President Barack Obama's appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau could become entangled in a legal battle over its legitimacy, though history and the Constitution appear to favor him, experts said.
The White House said on Wednesday Obama would use his constitutional authority to install Cordray while Congress was not in session, drawing anger and criticism from rival Republicans who insisted Congress was not in formal recess.
While the Senate resumes lawmaking only on January 23, it has been holding brief non-legislative "proforma" sessions every three days to try to keep Obama from making recess appointments without its consent. The last, on Tuesday, was for a minute; the next is on Friday.
Infuriated Republicans denounced Obama's action on Wednesday as unprecedented, but history shows similar appointments were made during the presidencies of both Democrat Harry Truman and Republican Theodore Roosevelt.
White House lawyers determined the Senate was in recess as long as it was not conducting legislative business and Obama could therefore move ahead with Cordray's appointment under the Constitution, presidential spokesman Jay Carney said. He said this was also the view during the George W. Bush administration.
Also on Wednesday, Obama announced plans to "recess-appoint" three members to the National Labor Relations Board, potentially raising issues for that agency as well.
While Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell assailed the "uncertain legal territory" of the presidential action, it seemed unlikely the issue would be resolved anytime soon in the courts. Legal challenges of agency decisions often take months, if not years.
But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which fiercely opposed creation of the consumer protection bureau, said it would not rule out a legal challenge to Cordray's appointment and it could weigh heavily on future actions by the watchdog.
"One of the lawyers we consulted on this said 'if you are bringing a suit on a rule against this agency and you didn't raise this issue you could be charged with legal malpractice,'" said David Hirschmann, head of the group's Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness.
Cordray told Reuters he was ready to get down to work and would not be distracted by possible legal challenges. "I can't be distracted by that," he told Reuters after flying to Cleveland on Air Force One with Obama.
NOMINATION BATTLE
The battle over nominations dates back to the Bush administration when Democrats kept the Senate in similar "proforma" sessions to try to block recess appointments by the Republican president, not leaving for more than three days.
Under the Constitution, the House of Representatives and Senate must agree on any recess lasting longer than three days.
Republicans who control the House have blocked any longer breaks in hopes that would prevent appointments by Obama.
The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said in a report last month the Constitution did not specify how long the Senate must be away for recess appointments to be made but Republicans pointed to a 1993 Justice Department legal brief that said they had to be away longer than three days.
One law professor said that brief wrongly referred to the constitutional requirement that the two chambers have the approval from one another to break for more than three days and that the courts will likely be hesitant to intervene now.
"There is no minimum time needed to trigger the president's recess appointment authority," said Catholic University Columbus School of Law professor Victor Williams, adding that he doubted the courts would look favorably on a legal challenge.
"The courts are very reluctant to second guess the political branches when a duty has been given to political branches, explicitly, textually by the Constitution," he said.
The congressional report found two examples of appointments made during recesses of less than three days, though they were done after Congress completed a session and before they began the next one.
President Theodore Roosevelt made some 160 appointments in 1903 when Congress was gone for less than a day, and the Truman administration made one appointment in 1949 when the Senate was gone for two days, the report said.
"As far as can be determined, no succeeding president has made recess appointments under similar circumstances," the CRS report said. "The shortest recess during which appointments have been made during the past 20 years was 10 days."
Republicans also pointed to an Obama administration official referring to the three-day recess precedent in a legal argument before the Supreme Court, but the justices did not address that issue and were rather focused on the legitimacy of decisions by a government agency that did not have a quorum of members.
One banking industry consultant noted that with Cordray's appointment, it may speed legal challenges to the financial regulatory reform law known as Dodd-Frank.
"The issue is not so much Cordray, or whoever is the director, but the CFPB itself and some of the powers it has been given under Dodd-Frank," said Bert Ely.
(Additional reporting by David Henry in New York, Matt Spetalnick aboard Air Force One, Alexandra Alper and Richard Cowan in Washington. Editing by Howard Goller and Todd Eastham)
Copyright 2012 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.
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Saturday, January 7, 2012
AIDS group rejects allegations against France's Bruni (Reuters)
PARIS (Reuters) ? The Global Fund, a wealthy medical charity, on Friday dismissed as "inexact and misleading" a magazine report of alleged financial misconduct implicating French first lady Carla Bruni, who is one of its ambassadors.
The Geneva-based fund issued the statement after the French magazine Marianne said in an article the fund had awarded $3.5 million of contracts to companies controlled by a musician friend of Bruni, the wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy, at her request.
The multi-billion-dollar fund, set up 10 years ago to combat AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, issued the money without a public tender, Marianne said.
"The article makes several allegations that are groundless regarding a campaign that the Fund launched in 2010 with the backing of Mme Bruni-Sarkozy," its statement said.
Sarkozy's office declined to comment, saying it had nothing to add to the statement from the Global Fund.
The focus of the story is an AIDS awareness campaign called Born HIV Free which the fund said cost a total of $2.8 million and which allowed it to leverage further support worth $20.4 million in the form of free advertising and creative work by media partners.
A Global Fund official said Bruni had asked a friend, Julien Civange, to represent her and develop a concept of how entertainment could be used to publicise the AIDS fight.
Based on Civange's idea, the Fund agreed to pay him and four employees 580,000 euros over 18 months to develop a campaign, in accordance with the fund's rules which allow non-competitive contracting when an individual has a proprietary idea.
"As part of this process, Mr Civange brought in pro-bono contributions worth $20.4 million through free media placements, advertising and creative work," said the official.
Bruni, a singer and former supermodel who married Sarkozy in early 2008, was appointed "first ambassador" in the same year of the Global Fund. Her husband was elected in 2007 and is widely expected to run for a second term in an election less than four months from now.
The Global Fund, a public-private partnership, was set up in 2002 and says it has saved 7.7 million lives with funding for AIDS treatment and programmes worldwide to fight malaria and tuberculosis.
(Reporting By Brian Love and Patrick Vignal; Editing by Jon Boyle)
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Mayor Jennings defends police actions
Posted at: 01/06/2012 5:21 PM
| Updated at: 01/06/2012 5:41 PM
By: WNYT Staff
His comments follow Thursday night's Common Council meeting, attended by Police Chief Steven Krokoff.
Krokoff admitted he gave officers the order to use pepper spray on some protesters that they felt were becoming disorderly.
Critics have accused the officers of using excessive force. Friday, Mayor Jennings backed the police and also called for more cooperation from protesters.
?I don't have any problems with the way we've handled it and I would hope in the future they would cooperate with us much more than in the past couple of weeks, but you know we don't want confrontation," said Jennings. "We want people to come here and they have a right to protest, we?ll work with them but we?re not going to tolerate my DGS workers being abused, disrespect or some of the things that took place there."
District Attorney David Soares has said his office will investigate, but Occupy Albany members say such an investigation would not be independent.
Source: http://wnyt.com/article/stories/s2442266.shtml?cat=300
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Friday, January 6, 2012
Quadrantid meteor shower won't have to compete with moonlight
Quadrantid meteor shower peak could hit as many as 100 meteors per hour, says NASA. The Quadrantid meteor shower will peak at 2 a.m. on Jan. 4.
The first meteor shower of 2012 ? the lesser known Quadrantid meteor shower ? will kick off a new year of skywatching when it peaks on Wednesday (Jan. 4).
Skip to next paragraphWhile many meteor displays in 2011 were washed out by a bright moon, the?Quadrantid meteor shower?is expected to put on a spectacular light show, with no pesky moonlight to interfere. The peak of the Quadrantids will occur at around 2 a.m. EST (0700 GMT) on Jan. 4.
If you're planning to stay up late to catch the peak, you could be treated to meteors at a rate of 100 per hour, NASA officials said in a statement. Luckily, the waxing gibbous moon will set at around 3 a.m. local time, so as long as there are clear skies, conditions should be ripe for meteor watching into the pre-dawn hours. The?sky map available here ?shower where to look to see the Quadrantid meteors.
RECOMMENDED: Top 12 skywatching events of 2012
Unlike the more well-known Perseid and Geminid meteor showers, the Quadrantids last only a few hours, so skywatchers have a narrower window of opportunity to spot them.
Meteor showers occur when Earth travels through leftover debris from comets or asteroids. They are often known as "shooting stars," because of the way they streak across the sky.
The Quadrantid meteors originate from an asteroid called 2003 EH1, and were first seen in 1825. According to some studies, this cosmic body could be a piece of a comet that broke apart several centuries ago, and the Quadrantids are the crumbled relics of debris from this fragmentation, NASA officials said. [12 Must-See Skywatching Events in 2012]
As Earth passes through, dust and debris will enter the planet's atmosphere a blistering speed of about 90,000 miles per hour (almost 145,000 kilometers per hour). These fragments will burn up about 50 miles (80 km) above Earth's surface, NASA officials said.
Most meteor showers get their name based on the constellations from which they appear to streak. When we look at the so-called radiants, we are looking down the paths of the meteors that strike Earth's atmosphere.
Because of the location of the radiant, at the northern tip of the constellation Bootes, only northern hemisphere skywatchers will be able to see Quadrantids.
The Quadrantids were named after the constellation of Quadrans Muralis, the wall quadrant, which is located between the constellations of Bootes and Draco. Quadrans Muralis was named by the French astronomer Jerome Lalande in 1795.
The constellation represents an early astronomical instrument that was used to observe and plot stars. Interestingly, the constellation is no longer recognized by the astronomical community, but the name lives on with the January meteor shower.
Editor's note: If you snap an amazing photo of the Quadrantid meteor shower would like to share it with SPACE.com, contact managing editor Tariq Malik at?tmalik@space.com.
QUIZ: Are you scientifically literate? Take the quiz.
You can follow SPACE.com staff writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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ICANN to expand top level domains despite critics (Reuters)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? ICANN, an independent body responsible for organizing the Internet, plans to press ahead with plans to expand the number of possible website addresses despite criticism from industry and concerns from some law enforcement groups.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which decides who gets to manage .com, .net and other domains to the right of the period in a URL, plans to begin accepting applications next week for a hugely expanded number of Web domain options.
This has infuriated and worried corporations, which already troll the web looking for trademark violations and sometimes buy web addresses they don't plan to use to prevent them from falling into the hands of cybersquatters.
In a letter Tuesday, Lawrence Strickling, administrator of the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, urged ICANN to take steps to minimize the need for these defensive registrations.
"In meetings we have held with industry over the past weeks, we have learned that there is tremendous concern about the specifics of the program that may lead to a number of unintended and unforeseen consequences and could jeopardize its success," Strickling wrote on Tuesday.
ICANN said on Wednesday that it would review Strickling's recommendations. "We appreciate Assistant Secretary Strickling's comments and suggestions," said Steve Crocker, chair of ICANN's board in an emailed statement.
Each top level domain would cost $185,000. Applications will be accepted beginning on January 12, although it is not known when the first new registries will be up and running.
"Of course, we're going to go slow," said a source close to ICANN.
That said, ICANN has no plans to delay rollout of the top level domain expansion, a goal that is to allow more innovation in website addresses and to open the space to the non-Latin alphabets. It has pledged a quick take-down for trademark violators under the new system.
Strickling also urged ICANN to do a better job of identifying who controls particular websites, with the goal of being able to aid law enforcement if the sites are used for criminal activity.
But Dan Jaffe, a lobbyist with the American Advertising Federation, worried that companies would be forced to spend millions not only to monitor their trademarks in top level domains but in the proliferating number of websites.
"The problem is the history and the history has been that ICANN has not been responsive," said Jaffe.
Jim Lewis, a tech expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the high cost alone of applying for a top level domain -- $185,000 -- would go a long way toward deterring bad registry owners.
"Slow (implementation) is probably better," he added. "Their (companies') concern is brand dilution. It's a reasonable concern."
(Editing by Bernard Orr)
(Reporting By Diane Bartz)
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Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Fisker Karma recall is official, 239 cars will need their battery packs swapped
Continue reading Fisker Karma recall is official, 239 cars will need their battery packs swapped
Fisker Karma recall is official, 239 cars will need their battery packs swapped originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 Jan 2012 07:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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