Gaetz could become AG without Senate Approval through a recess appointment

Mr. Trump has made it clear that he wants the option of going around the Senate to install cabinet and other appointees without the chamber’s approval, reported The New York Times. He could do so with what is known as a “recess appointment,” which allows a president to act on his own when the Senate is not in session.

But it is not clear whether Republican senators would go along with that plan by going out of session at Mr. Trump’s request. Some of them have raised particular alarm at the selection of former Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, the ethics-challenged, hard-right firebrand who has a habit of insulting fellow Republican lawmakers, for attorney general.

Mr. Trump could try to force the issue, invoking an untested clause of the Constitution that could be challenged and even end up before the Supreme Court.

Here’s how it works.

Recess appointments were meant to be a logistical fail-safe.

Article II of the Constitution says that the president can name officials “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.” That has been interpreted for centuries to mean that the chamber is responsible for vetting and ultimately confirming the president’s nominees.

But when the Constitution was written in the country’s early days, travel was by horse, and the Senate often was out of session for weeks or months at a time. If a critical vacancy arose, senators could not necessarily convene quickly to confirm a replacement. So the founders included an exception that allowed the president to fill vacancies that arose during a recess without any action by the Senate.

That is known as a “recess appointment.” There is far less need for it in the era of cars and air travel, but presidents have invoked it in modern times as a matter of convenience and political expediency.

Recess appointments are common, but usually for lower-level officials.

Several presidents have used recess appointments. President Bill Clinton made 139 recess appointments, and President George W. Bush made 171, although neither used the maneuver to fill cabinet positions as Mr. Trump wants to do.

President Barack Obama filled 32 positions using recess appointments, including the assistant attorney general and several under secretary roles at various departments.

Because recess appointments were never designed to be permanent, the appointee’s term expires at the end of the next congressional session. There are also limitations on how and when a recess appointee can be paid.

Because of a constitutional quirk, neither chamber recesses for long.

Both the House and Senate frequently take long breaks. But to comply with a constitutional requirement that neither chamber adjourn for three days or more without the consent of the other, they typically convene for a brief period every three days.

Little business, if any, is conducted during these meetings, called “pro forma” sessions. They are also used to prevent recess appointments or pocket vetoes, a way of allowing a bill to die if it is left unsigned by the president when Congress adjourns. The sessions usually involve the saying of a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance before a single member bangs the gavel to adjourn and restart the three-day clock.

In 2014, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Mr. Obama had violated the Constitution by making recess appointments during a break in the Senate’s work when the chamber was convening pro forma sessions. Those breaks were too short to be considered recesses, the justices ruled.

They said the Senate must be out for at least 10 days for it to count as a recess for the purpose of the president’s appointment power.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader who is stepping down from his leadership role in the next Congress, filed an amicus brief in that case.

Trump could try to force a recalcitrant Senate to recess, but the power is untested.

Article II of the Constitution allows a president to adjourn one or both chambers of Congress under certain circumstances, including if the House and Senate disagree about when to be in session.

In that scenario, the Republican-led House could pass an adjournment resolution and if the Senate refused to approve it, Mr. Trump could, as the Constitution says, “adjourn them to such a time as he shall think proper.” In theory, he could then make recess appointments. It appears that no president has ever tried that particular maneuver.

Edward Whelan, a conservative scholar, wrote in a recent Washington Post opinion piece that the scenario was a “cockamamie scheme” that Speaker Mike Johnson should denounce and refuse to implement.

Even if he went along, it is highly likely that Democrats would follow Mr. McConnell’s example and challenge Mr. Trump’s move as unconstitutional, almost certainly landing the question before the Supreme Court. Such a case, however, could take a long time to be adjudicated. By then, a theoretical Attorney General Matt Gaetz could have run the Justice Department for months or years.

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'Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure'

 Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 161 years ago today:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

—Abraham Lincoln

 

North Carolina spent $200 million on death penalty since last execution in 2006

North Carolina has not carried out an execution since 2006. In 6 of the last 10 years, North Carolina has not sentenced a single defendant to death. Despite the reluctance of jurors to impose death sentences and the hesitation of prosecutors and politicians to conduct executions, the death penalty has been a significant expense for state taxpayers, according to The Charlotte Observer.

According to a study conducted by Duke University researchers, death penalty prosecutions cost the state roughly $11 million per year. This means North Carolina has likely spent about $200 million on death penalty cases since its last execution in 2006. The additional costs of the death penalty begin at the defendant’s initial trial. Supreme Court precedent demands two separate trials for capital defendants. One to determine the defendant’s guilt, much like a traditional trial. The second trial is a resource-intensive presentation of the defendant’s life and the circumstances of the offense. For these sentencing trials, capital defendants are entitled to services from a wide range of mental health experts who extensively research the defendant’s life to find reasons why they may not deserve a death sentence.

After a defendant is sentenced to death, they go through decades of appeals to ensure that they had a fair trial. At each of the nine stages of appeals, the defendant is entitled to an attorney, and courts typically hire additional experts. If any of these appeals are successful, then the defendant will be entitled to a new, two-stage trial. If the defendant is sentenced to death again, they restart the lengthy appellate process from the beginning.

Although increased litigation costs are the largest reasons for the expense of the death penalty, they are not alone. North Carolina currently houses 136 defendants on death row in Raleigh, which costs roughly $85,000 per year to maintain.

Additionally, if North Carolina were to continue executions, the state would have to spend significant time and money to acquire pentobarbital, a drug legally required for executions in North Carolina. Pentobarbital is no longer sold by American pharmaceutical companies for the purposes of execution.

In 2020, Arizona recently spent $1.5 million to acquire pentobarbital from an undisclosed source. In the time since then, the drug has only become rarer and more expensive. Each of these expenses, from two-stage trials, to paying out countless experts, litigating a seemingly endless set of appeals and procuring expensive drugs, could be avoided by instead sentencing all capital defendants in North Carolina to life in prison and eliminating the death penalty.

While some death penalty proponents may argue for cutting corners to save money in our death penalty system, this is not a feasible option. North Carolina is bound by well-established Supreme Court precedent that grants capital defendants many expensive rights and processes. Further, the appeals system and experts involved in the death penalty serve an important purpose. Without these safeguards, it would be significantly more likely for an innocent defendant to be sentenced to death.

North Carolina has no reason to invest so much time and money into killing, when the state could instead work to protect citizens’ lives today. Our state would be a safer, more compassionate place if we reinvest the millions of dollars we spend on our death penalty system each year into victim’s funds, police training and resources, and mental health services.

The time to abolish the death penalty is now.

To read more CLICK HERE

No correlation between violent crime and criminal justice reform

 Radley Balko writes in The Watch:

There is very little evidence that criminal justice reforms or progressive prosecutors are responsible for the spike in violent crime. Multiple studies have found no correlation between reform and crime rates at all, and as far as I know just one study claimed to find a correlation between progressive prosecutors and a slight uptick property crime — but no link to violent crime.

But the more obvious reason to doubt any link is that between 2020 and roughly 2022 violent crime also went up everywhere, including in jurisdictions with traditional, law-and-order prosecutors. It then went on a steep, nationwide decline in 2022. That, too, has been a nationwide trend, including in jurisdictions that passed and sustained reforms, as well as those that retained progressive prosecutors.

But the narrative appears to be immune to data. The most high-profile loss last week in Los Angeles, where voters ousted district attorney George Gascón, one of the more well-known names in the progressive prosecutor movement. Gascón faced a revolt the moment he took office, as the prosecutors’ union went to court to get an injunction barring him from implementing reforms — reforms clearly supported by voters at the time — by arguing that they violated the rights of prosecutors. (That’s a hell of a sentence to write.) And they won.

Gascón then faced over two dozen more lawsuits from holdover prosecutors. They accused him of retaliation for publicly criticizing him, and of interfering with their cases by imposing the policies he was elected to implement. I can’t speak to the merit of specific accusations, but as someone who has been watching this stuff for 20 years, I can say that a reform-minded line prosecutor who publicly criticized a traditional DA the way these prosecutors went after Gascón would be fired in a heartbeat. L.A. prosecutors seem to think their “right” to implement carceral policies supersedes the will of the people they serve. And unfortunately, the courts seemed to agree, as some of these prosecutors won six and seven-figure awards. Still, Gascón survived two recall attempts before finally losing last week.

California voters also passed a ballot initiative to increase penalties for some drug crimes, and to allow felony charges for repeat low level theft offenders — a response to the widely-distributed myth that a 2014 initiative had effectively “legalized” shoplifting in the state. The state’s voters even rejected a ban on forced labor of incarcerated people.

To read more CLICK HERE

Matt Gaetz nomination a litmus test for U.S. Senate

 President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of former Congressman Matt Gaetz as attorney general is not as outlandish as it appears. Gaetz who would serve at the top law enforcement official in the country, resigned from the United States House of Representatives only days before a, purportedly, scathing ethics report was going to be release.

The investigation was no secret, Gaetz allegedly had sex with a teenager and used illicit drugs. The police had investigated the matter as well.

Gaetz's nomination is not because he is the best available person for the job, far from it.  He is being sent to the U.S. Senate to test just how far GOP senators will let the soon to be president go.  If the senate confirms Gaetz the sky is the limit for President Trump.  Gaetz is a litmus test . . . 

Mangino appears with Nancy Grace on Merit Street Media's Crime Stories

Watch my interview with Crime Stories' Nancy Grace on Merit Street Media about the disappearance of Elisa Lam and the tragic discovery of her body in LA's Cecil Hotel.

To watch CLICK HERE

Convenience store owner shoots Black child falsely accused of shoplifting

On November 10, 58-year-old Rick Chow, owner of Columbia’s Xpress Mart Shell Station in South Carolina, chased and shot 14-year-old Cyrus Carmack-Belton whom he falsely accused of shoplifting, reported Martie Bowser at Blavity News. 

According to local news station WLTX, Chow accused Carmack-Belton of stealing four water bottles.  

During a press conference on Monday, Sheriff Leon Lott revealed the teenager had not shoplifted anything from the store. He later described the shooting as “unjustified” and “senseless.”

As he commented on Sunday’s tragic event, Lott told the media and members of the community, “You don’t do what happened last night.”

The interaction between Chow and Carmack-Belton began around 8 p.m. The teen and the store owner argued after Chow accused the 14-year-old of stealing water he touched.

Although Carmack-Belton touched the bottles, surveillance footage showed he placed them back in the cooler.

After the teen left the store, Chow’s son chased Carmack-Belton into a nearby apartment complex.

Lott stated the teen tripped and fell before Chow shot him in the back after his son claimed the teen had a gun.

The outlet reports authorities confirmed Carmack-Belton had a gun, but he didn’t point it at the father and son.

The Richland County coroner, Naida Rutherford, reported the gunshot wound injured the teen’s heart.

She later took to social media to clear up any misinformation about the shooting, stating it would be ruled a homicide.

Lott was openly distraught during the press conference. The Daily Mail transcribed the transgressions he felt with Chow’s actions.

“You don’t shoot somebody in the back if he’s not a threat to you. It’s the same standard that we do, that cops have to live by. You have to be defending someone’s life or your life. There has to be immediate danger to you.”

He emphasized the teen was running away with his back turned and wasn’t pointing a gun at anyone.

“Even if he had shoplifted four bottles of water, it’s not something you shoot anyone over much less a 14-year-old.”

Since the shooting, the convenience store on Parklane Road has been vandalized and looted in retaliation for the murder.

Community members have held multiple protests and vigils at the location, demanding justice for the teenager.

To read more CLICK HERE