This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Mike Lee is crying wolf.
The junior senator from the state of Utah has gone all ballistic over the fact that President Obama has a marginally different interpretation of the Constitution than he does.
Lee is so hot and bothered about it that he is calling Obama a tyrant, comparing the appointment of a mid-level bureaucrat to Pearl Harbor and boasting that he will single-handedly block the Senate from doing its job until the duly elected president of the United States starts following the orders of one one-hundredth of one half of one third of the federal government: Namely, himself.
If that's Lee's version of respect for the Constitution, he may be all alone in holding it.
In making these arguments in many forums (including Page 4 of this section), Lee is not only embarrassing himself and his home state. He is also helping the president and his fellow Democrats to paint Lee and his fellow Republicans as obstructionists and tools of Wall Street. He is also stretching the boundaries of the very Constitution he claims to revere just to get his own way.
Lee's primary beef is that, after the Senate blocked the appointment of Richard Cordray to be the head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Obama installed his choice anyway. The president cited the constitutional provision allowing such appointments when the Senate is in recess, and made the judgment that the Senate, which had set up a charade process to pretend it was in session, had actually adjourned for the holidays.
Lee argues otherwise. And his certainty, often misleading and simple-minded, about what has happened, and what the Constitution has to say about it, is troubling.
Lee says the Senate voted down the Cordray appointment. It didn't. The nomination was filibustered to death, a technique not mentioned in the Constitution.
Lee says the Senate was not in recess. Obama says it was. The Constitution doesn't define what a congressional recess is. It even gives the president the power to resolve disputes over that question when the House and Senate disagree.
The problem is not that Lee venerates the Constitution. It is that he venerates only his own questionable interpretation of it, an interpretation that just happens to align itself with the widespread Republican desire to cripple any new government move to regulate the financial titans who darn near crashed the global economy not that long ago.
Lee is not doing himself, the public or the Constitution any favors. He needs to give it up.