Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Senator planning to block White House nominations until Benghazi information is released

Senator Lindsey Graham has stated his intentions to impede nominations from the white house until more information is released about the Benghazi attack last year.  The Republican from South Carolina is demanding that congress be allowed to question the survivors of that attack, and until then he plans on blocking the process to approve the new nominees to the head of the Federal Reserve and the head of the department of homeland security. Actions such as this seem to be a growing trend in contemporary politics. Politicians won’t get there way on a certain issue, and instead of accepting defeat they’ll hold another, completely unrelated, government function hostage. The obvious recent example of this is the government shutdown earlier this year. And now we’re having a similar stubbornness on a smaller scale. The nomination of someone to the head of the Federal Reserve has absolutely nothing to do with an attack on a US ambassador over a year ago. The fact that these two events are even being related together right now is absurd.  Our government leaders need to focus on the issues at hand. You don’t get to bring unrelated issues to a standstill because you aren't getting your way. I understand that we need checks and balances and measures to keep government from changing too drastically. But these measures shouldn’t be used in inappropriate ways such as this. The Framers put the Appointments Clause in the constitution so that the Senate could approve of nominees and make sure the president put forth fair and qualified candidates. It was not added in order to let a disgruntled senator negotiate over the ability to speak to witnesses from an international incident.

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