Confirmations, Removals, and Vetoes

More detail on nomination, confirmation, and appointment

The nuclear option (Fisher, pp. 35-36):

Senatorial courtesy (Fisher, pp. 33-34) and blue slips

Confirmation Hearings

Confirmation hearings:

• John Kerry has questions for a nominee for Ambassador to Belgium, and donor to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Why do you think Bush pulled the nomination?

Kerry Confronts Swift Boat Funder
by NEW_FRONTIER

• Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse uses Mukasey's confirmation hearing to make a point about waterboarding:

Removals:

• Federalist 77: IT HAS been mentioned as one of the advantages to be expected from the co-operation of the Senate, in the business of appointments, that it would contribute to the stability of the administration. The consent of that body would be necessary to displace as well as to appoint. 
• But he flip-flops as Pacificus: "With these exceptions the Executive Power of the Union is completely lodged in the President. This mode of construing the Constitution has indeed been recognized by Congress in formal acts, upon full consideration and debate. The power of removal from office is an important instance."
• Decision of 1789
• Myers v. US
• Humphrey's Executor v. US
• ONCE AGAIN: INDEPENDENT AGENCIES AND INDEPENDENT REGULATORY COMMISSIONS ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.
• Saturday Night Massacre (Fisher, p. 81):
• Ruckelshaus on the massacre
• Bork on the massacre

Vetoes 

Newt Gingrich, Lessons Learned the Hard Way (1998):

We had not only failed to take into account the ability of the Senate to delay us and obstruct us, but we had much too cavalierly underrated the power of the President, even a President who had lost his legislative majority and was in a certain amount of trouble for other reasons. I am speaking of the power of the veto. Even if you pass something through both the House and the Senate, there is that presidential pen. How could we have forgotten that? For me especially it was inexcusable, because when I was Republican whip during the Bush Administration one of my duties had been precisely to help sustain presidential vetoes.

Item Veto





Congressional (Legislative Veto)