In a potential blow to the “Donald Trump is NOT a fascist!” crowd, the president-elect has made a fascist-adjacent demand: He wants to install government officials without Senate approval.

You may have heard Trump promoting “recess appointments” lately. That provision allows the president to fill important government vacancies when Congress is not in session. It’s essentially meant for emergency situations, not for an incoming president who wants to bypass checks on who he picks to run key parts of the federal government.

It’s easy to see why Trump wants to do this, since many of his Cabinet choices thus far reside somewhere between comical and patently absurd. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – a conspiracy theorist, anti-vaccine polio-enthusiast and road-kill-eating nut-bird – as head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Noted dog-gunner Kristi Noem for Homeland Security. Matt Gaetz, an ethically challenged forehead that became a real boy, for attorney general. A Fox News host with big biceps and problematic tattoos to head up the Department of Defense.

Most of them couldn’t get hired as your local dogcatcher – except maybe South Dakota Gov. Noem if she lived in a town run by cats – so Trump’s desire to dodge a confirmation process that would pull the curtain back on this parade of nincompoops is understandable.

But using recess appointments to stock an administration is not at all what the Founding Fathers intended.........

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