UPDATE: "Seldom Exercised" Recess Appointment

I had a little fun today with that Journal reporter who glommed onto to the liberal spin that Pres. Bush was taking some outrageous liberties by making a recess appointment of John Bolton.

Yesterday, I had dropped a quick e-mail to the reporter about his piece thinking I could offer him a little enlightenment.

> Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 11:55:55 -0700 (PDT)
> From: R Ryan
> Subject: "Seldom Excercised" Recess Appointment
> To: mark.gongloff@wsj.com
>
> I'm curious on your use of the term "seldom
> exercised" in describing Pres. Bush's recess
> appointment of John Bolton.
>
> Ronald Reagan used his recess appointment authority
> 243 times; George H. W. Bush 77 times; Bill Clinton
> 140 times; and now George W. Bush 105 times.
>
> That's 565 recess appointments in 25 years -- hardly
> "seldom exercised".
>
> Richard Ryan
> Barrington, IL

His response? Nada

Today, I thought of it again and this time dropped a note to the Journal's managing editors.

From: Rich Ryan
Date: Aug 2, 2005 1:02 PM
Subject: The Liberal Slant of the Wall Street Journal?
To: b.grueskin@wsj.com, dave.pettit@wsj.com, j.heller@wsj.com, j.fry@wsj.com, t.cullen@wsj.com

I am continually mystified by the apparent discrepancy between the
Journal's editorial positions and the liberal slant taken by some of
its "news" reporters.

I expect a particular point of view from the editorial page. However,
I expect "straight" reporting in the rest of the paper. (In fact, if
I wanted to read editorializing masquerading as news reporting, I
could just subscribe to the New York Times.)

Case in point: Yesterday Mark Gongloff posted a piece on the John
Bolton appointment and characterized it by saying "Using a
seldom-exercised power, Mr. Bush appointed John Bolton, an
Undersecretary of State dealing with weapons of mass destruction,
to be the U.S. representative to the U.N."

"Seldom exercised"? A quick check on wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org),
shows me that the recess appointment has been used 565 times in the
last 25 years. That hardly qualifies as "seldom exercised". However,
Gongloff makes it sound as if Bolton's appointment was some kind of
extra-constitutional usurpation of power by Pres. Bush.

The Journal is an excellent paper and I continue to subscribe to both
the print and on-line editions. However, if your "news" reporters
want to editorialize, I'd appreciate it if they would apply for
positions on the editorial staff.

Richard Ryan
Barrington, IL

About 30 minutes later, I got this response from the Journal reporter.

From: Gongloff, Mark
Date: Aug 2, 2005 1:38 PM
Subject: RE: "Seldom Excercised" Recess Appointment
To: R Ryan

Thanks for writing.

My use of the phrase "seldom-used" to describe recess appointments in the Afternoon Report was an error. The tool has often been used by modern presidents, including Reagan, Clinton and both Presidents Bush. But it has seldom been used for high-profile appointments such as Mr. Bolton's. That was my meaning, but in my haste, I didn't make that distinction clear. In the Evening Wrap, I pointed out that, though high-profile candidates don’t often get appointed in this way, some very high-profile candidates have been recess appointments, including a few Supreme Court Justices.

Best regards,

Mark

"But it has seldom been used for high-profile appointments such as Mr. Bolton's. That was my meaning ..." Yeah, right. Nice try -- not. :-)

The lesson learned here though is: you liberals blow off my e-mails at your peril! :-) That'll learn ya to ignore my e-mail. Not a good idea what the Journal's website has the e-mail IDs for the entire management and editorial staff!