"President Barack Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate to fill vacancies on a labor relations panel..."

"... a federal appeals court panel ruled Friday."

The unanimous decision is an embarrassing setback for the president, who made the appointments after Senate Republicans spent months blocking his choices for an agency they contended was biased in favor of unions....

Obama claims he acted properly in the case of the NLRB appointments because the Senate was away for the holidays on a 20-day recess. But the three-judge panel ruled that the Senate technically stayed in session when it was gaveled in and out every few days for so-called “pro forma” sessions.

GOP lawmakers used the tactic — as Democrats have in the past as well — to specifically to prevent the president from using his recess power....

The Supreme Court is likely to take this case, which, if it is not reversed, will invalidate all the decisions the NLRB has made going back more than a year and that going forward, there is no quorum for it to decide any cases. 

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"In this bill we will nullify anything the president does that smacks of legislation."

"And there are several of the executive orders that appear as if he’s writing new law. That cannot happen.... I’m afraid that President Obama may have this 'king complex' sort of developing, and we’re going to make sure it doesn’t happen."

ADDED: "If not good law, there was worldly wisdom in the maxim attributed to Napoleon that 'The tools belong to the man who can use them.' We may say that power to legislate for emergencies belongs in the hands of Congress, but only Congress itself can prevent power from slipping through its fingers."

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"The president is going to act... Executive order, executive action that can be taken; we haven't decided what that is yet."

"But we're compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and all the rest of the cabinet members as well as legislative action, we believe, is required."

Gun control, it's coming, we don't know exactly how we're going to do it, but we're going to do it without the assistance of Congress, says VP Joe Biden.

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