Bush bypasses Senate, appoints conservatives Reich, Scalia

Associated Press WriterWASHINGTON (AP) -- Circumventing Senate opposition, President Bush signed recess appointments Friday for conservatives Otto Reich and Eugene Scalia.

A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the White House gave Congress formal notification of the long-threatened appointments early Friday afternoon.

By exercising his executive authority while Congress is in recess, Reich and Scalia will be allowed to serve until Congress recesses again at the end of the year, the official said.

Bush named Reich assistant secretary of state for Latin America, the top diplomatic post for the region that Bush made his primary foreign relations priority before the war on terrorism consumed his first year in office.

Scalia, the son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, now assumes the post of Labor Department solicitor, for which Bush nominated him several months ago.

Scalia's nomination was opposed by organized labor, in part for his opposition to Clinton-era rules aimed at reducing workplace injuries. Scalia criticized the rule as "quackery" based on "junk science."

Outspoken and ideologically conservative, Scalia becomes the Labor Department's top lawyer in charge of enforcing federal labor laws and worker protections.

Top presidential appointments are subject to Senate confirmation, but the Senate adjourned last month until Jan. 23 without taking up either Scalia's or Reich's nominations.

The Constitution gives the president the power during Senate recesses to install nominees, without Senate approval, until the end of the next session of Congress.

The Democratic-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee refused to give Reich a hearing, mostly because of opposition from Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.

Dodd and his allies consider Reich, a Cuban-American with close ties to conservative anti-Castro Cubans, to be unqualified for the post.

Dodd has said that Reich lacks bipartisan support.

But Secretary of State Colin Powell called Reich, a former ambassador to Venezuela, the most important among the State Department's unconfirmed nominees.

"He has done nothing -- nothing at all -- in his career in government that should be seen as disqualifying for this job," Powell said recently.

The Democrats' concerns over Reich focus on his lobbying activities as well as his leadership of the State Department's one-time Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean. The office -- which Reich led from its inception in June 1983 until January 1986 -- was accused of running an illegal, covert domestic propaganda effort against Nicaragua's Sandinista government and in favor of the Contra rebels.

Reich has denied any wrongdoing.