Republican senators file court brief to protect their right to break the government

President Barack Obama and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Chief Richard Cordray
meet with victims of mortgage fraud. Republicans don't like that. After months of endless whining about President Obama's use of recess appointments to keep the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau functioning, Republican senators have turned their whining into a court brief. The brief was filed in a case brought by Noel Canning, a Washington state company that the NLRB found violated labor laws. But if the company can get the recess appointments overturned, then the ruling against it wouldn't count:

Congressional Republicans and the White House have tussled over recess appointments since January. That month, Obama sidestepped the normal Senate confirmation process by appointing Cordray and three NLRB members, arguing that Congress was in recess.

The GOP responded that the Senate was not in recess'due to short, pro forma sessions designed to block Obama from making recess appointments'and so Obama's decision was unconstitutional.

Republicans had been using and were going to continue using the filibuster to block any appointments to the NLRB and CFPB, simply because they don't think an NLRB controlled by Democrats should be allowed to function and don't want the CFPB to exist at all. Now they're objecting to President Obama taking steps to make the government work. So what we have here is 42 of 47 Republican senators'all but Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Dean Heller of Nevada, both of whom are in tough reelection battles, along with Mark Kirk of Illinois, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Olympia Snowe of Maine'who are filing a court brief to insist on their right to, as a minority, prevent government agencies from functioning. Breaking the government is their priority, and they think they should get more power.