Forwarded by: "pappadeeda"
Subject: GOP Hypocrisy So Thick You Can Cut It!

Please read the following message from the Internet. Thanks!

What a difference ten years make:

Excerpted from The Washington Post, November 23, 1988:

Reagan Names 32 in Unusual Move

President Reagan invoked his constitutional powers yesterday to grant recess appointments to 32 people, including a number of controversial nominees and five ambassadors whose emergency appointments were opposed by some senior State Department officials.

White House officials said the appointees - including new ambassadors to Denmark, India, Israel and Oman - are expected to assume their offices even though their appointments may expire in eight weeks, on January 20, when George Bush becomes president.

The use of recess appointments to name ambassadors eight weeks before the end of an administration is unprecedented. If the ambassadors go to their posts and are recalled quickly, the costs of transporting them and their families will be considerable, officials said....

White House officials said Reagan's actions were proper and came only after Congress had failed to act on the nominations before it recessed October 23....

The diplomatic appointments angered some senior career foreign service officers and State Department officials, and they are expected to encounter opposition on Capitol Hill....

Senator Clayborne Pell (D-RI)... had cut short hearings on some of the diplomatic nominees this fall, saying that it would be better and more economical for the new president to fill the positions. He repeated his opposition yesterday saying that "since there is no urgency," Bush should have been allowed to act.

Inhofe To Protest Hormel Nomination
by Tom Raum

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A dispute over President Clinton's ambassadorial appointment of an openly gay San Francisco philanthropist could wind up slowing a range of Senate confirmations sought by the White House.

Among the appointments that could be jeopardized: Lawrence Summers to be treasury secretary and Richard Holbrooke to be ambassador to the United Nations.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., threatened Tuesday to single-handedly hold up "every single presidential nomination" to protest Clinton's appointment of James Hormel to be ambassador to Luxembourg.

Tired of waiting for the Senate to act after nearly two years had passed since he nominated Hormel, Clinton on Friday invoked a constitutional provision allowing him to install an official in a post during a congressional recess, sidestepping the Senate confirmation process.

Inhofe, who had led the opposition to Hormel's confirmation, said the president "has shown contempt for the Congress and the Constitution." He called the appointment, while Congress was on its one-week recess for Memorial Day, "highly inappropriate."...

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., joined Inhofe in criticizing Clinton, saying the president's move to appoint Hormel was "a subversion of the confirmation process." But Lott indicated he was unlikely to go along with Inhofe's blanket objection to presidential nominations...

[T]he president "has been extremely judicious in his use of recess appointments," Toiv said, adding that Clinton has made 57 such appointments in his 6 1/2 years in office, compared with President Reagan's 239 in eight years and President Bush's 78 in four years.

If Reagan does it WORSE, it's "invoking his constitutional powers."

The reaction of the hypocrites is exactly as expected.