Another faux issue: Obama's 'czars' are legal

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama isn't skirting the U.S. Constitution or abusing his authority by appointing so-called "czars," or policy coordinators, to oversee certain issues or problems, a Senate panel was told Tuesday.

Conservative talk show hosts and some mostly Republican lawmakers have accused Obama of embarking on an unprecedented czar-appointment spree in a bid to circumvent Congress' authority over top executive appointments, to dodge congressional oversight and to consolidate power in the White House.

Cabinet officers must be confirmed by the Senate and must report back to Congress frequently as lawmakers exercise constitutional oversight of the executive branch. But White House staff appointees -- including 'czars' -- aren't subject to Senate confirmation and often decline to testify before Congress, citing "executive privilege" to confine their advice to their boss, the president.

However, a panel of experts testifying before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution said that the number of such czars has been rising since the Nixon administration and that most czars aren't the all-powerful figures that critics portray them to be.

"There does not appear to be any fundamental constitutional or legal basis upon which a president's reliance upon high-level, political advisers may be questioned or prohibited," T.J. Halstead, deputy assistant director of the non-partisan Congressional Research Service's American Law Division, said in written testimony. "While the number of such advisers has grown substantially over the past few decades, that growth, even coupled with the arguably concordant increase in their influence, does not render their service presumptively unconstitutional."
Tuesday's hearing didn't satisfy Obama critics.
Read on.

What I want to know is what was Feingold thinking of following the wingnuts' issue of Obama czars. He should have known better since he is an attorney. No one questioned Bush with his czars and now Obama is being questioned. Waste of time.

Update: White House Slaps Down Feingold's Criticism Of Obama's “Czars”

Dems watched in puzzlement last month as Senator Russ Feingold announced plans for hearings into the Obama administration’s use of alleged “czars.” Feingold claimed his constituents were worried about the czars and formally asked the White House to “identify these individuals’ roles and responsibilities,” applying bipartisan legitimacy to an attack largely waged from the hothouses of the right.

Now the White House is slapping back at the criticism. In a lengthy letter to the Senator, White House counsel Greg Craig politely lays out the reasons why he thinks the “czar” line is ridiculous, saying none of the alleged czars “raises any valid concerns.”