The US Senate Democrats go into a watchkeeping routine

There is nothing I like better than to witness people who are unused to duty watches go into, well, duty watches. That's exactly what the Democratic senators did this past US holiday season.
Instead of calling the Senate into recess for the Thanksgiving holiday break, the Democrats kept the Senate alive. And it didn't make the self-important little prick in the Oval Office very happy.

President Bush Monday welcomed back Congress by criticizing Democrats for their priorities and blasting the Senate for using a procedural maneuver to prevent him from making recess appointments.

Procedural maneuver?

“In a political maneuver designed to block my ability to make recess appointments, congressional leaders arranged for a senator to come in every three days or so, bang a gavel, wait for about 30 seconds, bang a gavel again, and then leave,” Bush said. “Under the Senate rules, this counts as a full day. If 30 seconds is a full day, no wonder Congress has got a lot of work to do.”

Ahem! Yeah, well, this is coming from a president who now holds the record for more vacation days than any US president, evah! Tell us all about the workload Mr. "War President".

Bush is pissed-off that his ability to make recess appointments was blocked. Hmmm. Libby gathers that one up and lays it out.

Clearly, if he's so unhappy about it, Bush had intended to circumvent the confirmation process again with some sneaky recess appointments. I'd suggest the Democrats use that trick again during the Christmas break. It seems to have worked rather well.

Geez, George. Sucks, doesn't it? Democracy, I mean.