Has Obama abused executive power? His 5 most controversial uses.

Faced with a balky Congress that is unwilling to move his agenda or compromise on most matters, President Obama says he has no choice but to use executive power. House Speaker John Boehner plans to sue. Here are our picks for Mr. Obama’s most controversial uses of executive power:

5. Recess appointments

Jacquelyn Martin/AP/File
President Obama speaks at the League of Conservation Voters Capitol Dinner at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington on June 25, 2014. The next day, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the president had overstepped his bounds in making recess appointments without congressional aplimiting his power to make recess appointments without congressional approval.

In 2012, Obama made three “recess appointments” to the National Labor Relations Board while the Senate was technically still in session. Normally, such nominees would need to be confirmed by the Senate. When the Senate is truly in recess, the president is allowed to make temporary appointments to fill positions that would require Senate confirmation.

The Obama administration argued that Republican senators were using a “gimmick called “pro forma sessions” – quick sessions lasting just a few moments in which no Senate business is conducted – to prevent the president from making recess appointments.

In June 2014, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the president had overstepped his bounds, and that only the Senate can determine when it is in session. In a second, landmark decision in the case, the justices ruled 5-4 that the president had broad power to make recess appointments. But it was not as broad as Obama had wanted.

5 of 5

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.