It took two years and some political hardball, but the Senate finally confirmed former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The morning after the 66-34 confirmation vote last week, President Barack Obama remarked at the White House on the twists and turns of the nomination. With Cordray standing to his left, Obama told a small crowd inside the State Dining Room that Republicans had refused to give Cordray a vote "because they didn't like the law that set up the consumer watchdog in the first place." Obama used a recess appointment to make Cordray the CFPB's director in January 2012, a move that cast a cloud of legal uncertainty over the agency. Federal appeals courts ruled that two of Obama's recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board — done at the same time and in the same manner as Cordray's — were unconstitutional. "Without a director in place, the CFPB would have been severely hampered," Obama said. With Republicans still blocking Cordray and other White House nominations this year, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) threatened to use the so-called "nuclear option" to change long-standing Senate rules to strip the ability of Republicans to filibuster executive nominations. In the deal that averted the change, Cordray became first in a number of nominees to get a vote. "And thanks to not only Rich, but his terrific team — I know many are represented here — we've made real strides, even despite the fact that the agency was hampered by the confirmation process," Obama said. — Todd Ruger
MIT PRESSES TO INTERVENE IN AARON SWARTZ CASE IN D.C.
Lawyers for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, represented by Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr partner Patrick Carome and senior associate Laura Hussain, last week injected the university's voice into a public records spat in Washington federal district court.
