The US Senate is in session this week, even as Congress is on a week long break, but Senators aren't really working. 

Since late 2007, Senate Democrats have refused to let the Senate officially adjourn while Congress is taking a vacation, preventing the President from making an end run on the Senate's "advise and consent" power on nominations.

In the first seven years of his presidency, George W. Bush made 170 recess appointments.  105 of those were to full time administration positions.

For comparison, Bill Clinton made 139 recess appointments in 8 years; 95 were full time.

I won't even bore you with the "he said, she said" reasons that this parliamentary dispute erupted, but it is safe to say that Democrats seem ready to keep the Senate in session through the rest of this year, depriving the President of his recess appointment powers.

The issue hasn't made great waves, mainly because it isn't exactly Clinton v Obama.  As far as I can tell, President Bush has addressed it only once in the last year, just after Thanksgiving.

"In a political maneuver designed to block my ability to make recess appointments, congressional leaders arranged for a senator to come in every three days or so, bang a gavel, wait for about 30 seconds, bang a gavel again, and then leave," Mr. Bush told reporters.

"Under the Senate rules, this counts as a full day. If 30 seconds is a full day, no wonder Congress has got a lot of work to do," he jabbed.

We'll see that same schedule again this week, starting Tuesday morning at 9:15 am.  Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) gets to make the drive in for a quickie session.

The only point I would make on this is that when Republican turn the tables on Democrats in the future, and do the same thing to a Democratic President, the Dems won't get much sympathy.