The House Republican position on President Obama’s recess appointments is hard to even express without laughing. GOP Congressmembers are actually saying that they oppose the appointments because Congress is not in recess – and as soon as they finish their vacation and get back to Washington, they’ll have something to say about that.

The President is making a distinction between nominees who the various agencies can do without for a spell and nominees whose seating is crucial to the functioning of the agency.

The White House announced its lawyers view the President’s power to make recess appointments to be unfettered by GOP pro forma efforts to keep the Senate in session merely to obstruct the power to make appointments. This means the President may soon make other recess appointments, including to the National Labor Relations Board, which currently cannot operate because it lacks of quorum.

The recess appointment fight nominally only concerns Richard Cordray, the nominee to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Republicans want to block his confirmation because they stop the agency from gaining regulatory powers over non-bank financial institutions if they remain without a director. But a number of other nominees are caught in the crossfire of this fight, in particular nominees to lead other key financial industry NLRB regulators.

As is typical at the end of the year, Harry Reid attempted to clear out a backlog of uncontroversial Presidential appointments before the holiday break. But Mitch McConnell would not allow it. He wanted assurances, instead, that the President would not seek out any recess appointments during the break, and he objected to moving the outstanding nominees until that time.

This may come as a surprise, since throughout this year Republicans have been able to use pro forma sessions to never take Congress into recess, thereby blocking recess appointments. Indeed, that was the plan for this holiday break as well.

The Obama Administration, expecting that we’re in an age where the normal rules of politics apply and not an age of nullification, nominated two labor officials for open slots on the National Labor Relations Board. That board will see previous recess appointments expire at the end of the year, leaving it without a quorum and unable to function. The two appointees would fill the Democratic spots on the board.

The Machinists union reached tentative agreement on a new four-year contract with Boeing, in a move that probably ends the dispute over moving a factory from Washington State to South Carolina, which prompted action from the NLRB against what they saw as an illegal labor violation.

Sen. Lindsey Graham openly threatened the National Labor Relations Board before they filed a complaint against Boeing for illegally moving their plant from Washington state to South Carolina, according to notes taken by the NLRB’s general counsel, Lafe Solomon.

Just to get back to this drive for regulatory reform that you’ll see from the House GOP over the next several months, with spending de-emphasized, take a look at Eric Cantor’s memo on the upcoming agenda from the chamber. About 80% of it concerns repealing “job-destroying regulations,” which suddenly have become the core reason for the lack of jobs. I thought it was all about runaway spending, but I guess that was last week.

President Obama was asked today about the decision by the National Labor Relations Board with respect to Boeing, and you can see his answer in the video. He said that the NLRB is an independent agency and that there’s a pending judicial matter. “So I don’t want to get into the details of the case. I don’t know all the facts. That’s going to be for a judge to decide.”

However, he then spoke broadly about the fact that corporations need to have the “freedom to relocate,” although they have to follow the law, and that if that relocation occurs in the United States, “that’s a good thing.”