Last year, during a recess while Congress was still in session, President Obama appointed three members to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). While it is Constitutional for a President to make recess appointments during a inter-cession recess, these appointments were made during a intra-session recess. It may sound like a minor detail, but it's not. These appointments to the NRLB, which enforce employee and employer rights, don’t fall under that category. Whoops.

Democracy and Power 101: Government is PowerThe .. essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse. —James Madison, speech in the Virginia State Convention of 1829-1830

Who doesn’t love some Memphis soul music? Certainly, no red-blooded American could feel that way. However, in the current economy, we are all being forced to cut back on things that we enjoy.  Entertainment expenses are on the chopping block around the country. Concert attendance is down as people are cutting back on non-essentials. It’s not just musical events, either.

Sometimes, in the course of your life, there will be parties to which you are not invited. Are you ok? Shall I fetch the smelling salts? If you’re still reading this, I’ll assume that you’re a reasonable human being...and that you’re not planning on raising your children in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. 

Democracy and Power 108: ObfuscationWherever politics intrudes upon economic life, political success is readily attained by saying what people like to hear rather than what is demonstrably true. Instead of safeguarding truth and honesty, the state then tends to become a major source of insincerity and mendacity. – Hans F. Sennholz

Several of us have blogged about this previously at FreedomWorks, but I simply can't get over how absurd it is that President Obama has nominated Jack Lew for Secretary of the Treasury. (Click here for a list of all Jack Lew articles on the blog.) If you thought Timothy Geithner was bad, you should check out Jack Lew's record.

In this month's State of the Union Address the president put forth a plan to make college tuition more affordable. The proposal was met with praise in most quarters on the left, but surprisingly little attention from the right.

Democracy and Power 108: ObfuscationWherever politics intrudes upon economic life, political success is readily attained by saying what people like to hear rather than what is demonstrably true. Instead of safeguarding truth and honesty, the state then tends to become a major source of insincerity and mendacity. —Hans F. Sennholz

In Tuesday's State of the Union Address, President Obama proposed raising the federally mandated minimum wage to $9 per hour, a 24% increase over the current mandate. In a subsequent conversation, my friend David Guenther of the Texas Public Policy Foundation made a good point about the effects of this if it were to come to pass:

It is a strange sign of the world in which we live that politicians are compared to Jesus Christ himself. It’s interesting, however, to look at the reactions to these bizarre proclamations. Let’s take a look at Barack Obama and Marco Rubio, for example. Both have been called a savior recently, but the reactions from the men were markedly different.