Bush issues recess appointments for controversial nominees

Circumventing Senate opposition, President Bush signed recess appointments Friday for conservatives Otto Reich and Eugene Scalia. The White House gave Congress formal notification of the long-threatened appointments early Friday.

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.

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.