In less than 30 seconds this morning, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) gaveled to a close a 14-month standoff between Senate Democrats and President Bush, effectively ending the contentious 110th Congress and also blocking any last-minute appointments by the White House.
At 10 a.m. ET sharp, Bingaman oversaw the last of the pro forma sessions of the Senate, an open-and-shut day in which just one senator gavels the chamber into session and almost immediately gavels it shut. So long as these occur every fourth day, the Senate has technically not gone into an extended recess, forbidding the president from making interim appointments to the cabinet, judiciary and the sprawling network of bipartisan commissions that oversee domestic industries.
Read on.
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