Bush pees on Congress - again

The Times this morning again describes the servile bootlickery of Rs in Congress when it comes to their king. The occasion this time is yet another set of recess appointments to install people in office the Congress has made clear it does not want to see there.

George W. Bush's high-handed attitude toward his own majority in Congress keeps getting worse, and we keep waiting for the Republicans to notice they are being insulted.

The latest case in point is [...] Bush's appointment last week of the next two public trustees for Social Security and Medicare. Normally, those positions require confirmation by the Senate. But leaders from both parties had made it clear they objected to the president's choices. Then the [chimperor] did an end run, installing his candidates while Congress was in recess.

It's not unheard of for a president [or the chimperor] to use a recess appointment to overcome stonewalling from his opposition. But in the past, such maneuvers have been treated by the White House as emergencies; this one seems to regard them as nothing unusual.

Social Security and Medicare are overseen by six trustees, four of them administration officials. The other two are supposed to represent the public. The terms of the last two public trustees — Thomas Saving, an economist at Texas A&M, and John Palmer, former dean of the Maxwell School at Syracuse — expired last spring. In November, Mr. Bush renominated the same two men to serve new four-year terms. Senators protested, maintaining that the point of having public trustees is to ensure that fresh outsiders' perspectives are represented on the board.

Then again, the junta has never made a secret out of its contempt for quaint oddities like the separation of powers. Remember, unless we give dictator Bush every last shred of power he desires, the terrorists win.