SCOTUS RULES: The Supreme Court declined to take up the matter, ruling that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the case. The Supreme Court did NOT rule or comment on the merits of the case. I think Texas was right on the issues and was clearly the wrong plaintiff to bring this case forward.
I’m not a lawyer, but when the bureaucrats and judges in WI, PA, GA, and MI unilaterally changed election laws, circumventing their state legislature, one would have thought some members of the state legislature would have objected and filed those cases then. Even though it is probably too late to change the results now, it would probably make sense for some legislators in each of those states the file similar cases in their appropriate courts and settle these important issue going forward.
Republican led legislatures in WI, PA, GA, and MI need to act and clarify (or even amend) their election laws to clear up the many irregularities, anomalies, and potentially fraudulent activities to insure the legitimacy of elections in the future. The current state of affairs is NOT good for our country.
The electors will meet on Monday and then Congress will count the votes on January 6. Unfortunately, I think Biden will prevail, though I fully expect drama that day as objections are made and many of the issues in question will be brought up. However, unless both houses of Congress sustain an objection, the objection fails. The Democratic House is not going to sustain an objection to the Biden electors.
Some litigation may continue, but it will not change election results. We owe it to the American people to get to the bottom of all the allegations and confirm, correct, and/or re-establish the legitimacy of our constitutional republic by ensuring fair and honest elections.
Pretending nothing went wrong and that the hundreds of affidavits, software anomalies, and procedural irregularities don’t matter isn’t helping the anti-Trumper’s case. We ALL deserve to get to the bottom of these issues and guarantee fair and honest elections.
Georgia U.S. Senate Races: Nothing is more important. Both the Democrats are out of the mainstream leftist progressives, who support the radical positions on the far left. The only “check” on a run-away left wing progressive agenda is to have a check on the Executive Branch and Congress…hence a Republican controlled Senate that would require moderation and compromise.
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–Saul Anuzis
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60 Plus Weekly Video Rewind
Links to the articles discussed in the video:
Supreme Court rejects Texas lawsuit challenging swing-state election results
The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that sought to invalidate 10 million votes in four battleground states — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin — that President Trump lost.
Why it matters: It’s the latest and most significant legal defeat for Trump and his allies in their floundering attempt to overturn the 2020 election results. Trump tweeted Wednesday, “We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case. This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!”
What they’re saying: “The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot,” the Supreme Court wrote.
Background: Paxton’s suit asked justices to extend the deadline for election certification to Dec. 14, buying time for officials to investigate alleged voting irregularities in the four states.
Texas’ Unsuccessful Lawsuit Raises Voting Issues States Should Heed
The U.S. Supreme Court issued a short order Friday night declining to hear Texas’ recently filed lawsuit against Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Texas sought to invalidate the results of the 2020 presidential election in those states.
Texas raised a number of substantive issues in its request, including: one, that those states violated the Constitution’s Electors Clause, which entrusts state legislatures with the responsibility to determine the appointment of presidential electors; two, that those states violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by treating voters in different parts of those states unequally in terms of how ballots were cast and counted; and three, that those states violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause because the elections in those states were so fundamentally unfair.
But the Supreme Court never addressed those issues.
Instead, the high court denied Texas’ request to file the case, or “bill of complaint,” for “lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution.” The court went on to explain that this means, “Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its election.” Basically, Texas isn’t the right party to bring this suit…
… Still, while Texas’ lawsuit wasn’t successful, it raises serious issues regarding election integrity and constitutional law that ought to be addressed going forward.
Trump Supporters Right to Doubt Election
Some accuse Trump supporters of manufacturing allegations of voter fraud out of whole cloth and resisting the presidential election results in response to their supposed cult leader’s wishes. As usual, President Donald Trump is the villain and his supporters are complicit.
But again, the Trump-hating critics are wrong. Nationwide GOP distrust and outrage over the election is a grassroots phenomenon. Trump supporters did not take their cue from Trump. They witnessed the numerous anomalies on election night and beyond and recognized mischief when they saw it.
Am I saying the election was stolen? Well, I firmly believe that massive cheating occurred, especially in the so-called swing states. I can’t be sure whether there was enough to change the outcome of the election, though I strongly suspect it.
Millions of Americans don’t just strongly suspect it; they are sure of it. You should see my emails — not from fringers but sober, reasonable people. They are not, as some Trump haters have charged, trying to steal the election themselves by throwing out bogus claims of election fraud.
No, The Georgia Vote-Counting Video Was Not ‘Debunked.’ Not Even Close
Big Tech-backed “fact” “checking” outfit claimed to debunk explosive evidence in support of Republicans’ claims of significant election problems at a Thursday Georgia Senate hearing. It didn’t. Not even close.
Newly discovered security footage from Georgia’s State Farm Arena showed dozens of ballot counters, media, and Republican observers leaving en masse at the same time from the ballot-counting area for Fulton County. After they left, a small remnant of about four workers began pulling trunks containing thousands of ballots from underneath a table with a long tablecloth and running them through machines.
The footage supported claims from Republicans that they were told counting had stopped for the night, only to find out hours later that it had kept going on. You can and should watch the 12-minute portion of the testimony from Jacki Pick here.
Georgia GOP Chair Says ‘We Are Trusting No One,’ Promises ‘Eyes on Every Part’ of Voting Process
Georgia Republican Party chairman David Shafer said Thursday during Vice President Mike Pence’s rally for the upcoming Senate runoff election that the state party is “trusting no one” as it prepares for Georgia’s voting process to begin.
Shafer told the rally crowd of several hundred Thursday afternoon that Georgians must vote for Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler regardless of accusations that voter fraud occurred in the November 3 general election. “The fight for election integrity and the fight for David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler go hand in hand,” Shafer said.
Shafer was adamant that the state party is preparing accordingly to avoid questions of election integrity in the runoff election, taking place January 5, and confirmed his organization has recruited 4,000 poll watchers for the race.
“I want to promise you that we are trusting no one and taking nothing for granted,” Shafer said. “We have recruited 4,000 poll watchers for the upcoming runoff elections. We filed suit against our own secretary of state. We’re gonna make sure we have eyes on every part of the process.”
Shafer’s promise comes as the Georgia secretary of state’s office gave an update Thursday insisting full transparency was present in the state’s election process, including in the signature verification part, which has faced particular criticism from President Donald Trump, Trump’s legal team, and the Georgia GOP after the state’s hand recount of election results did not include signature verification.
What’s Biden Hidin’?
Ever since being declared president-elect, Joe Biden has been playing it cool. He’s refused to engage with President Donald J. Trump’s allegation that the outcome of the election turned on voter fraud. He’s left that job to surrogates while he focuses on building his White House staff, making key appointments and projecting the image that his approach to the office will be a calm and moderate one.
Now we know why. Thanks to leaks coming out of an online meeting held Tuesday with leaders of left-wing African-American groups, he’s afraid that a premature announcement of his progressive intentions would cost the Democrats any chance they have of winning the January 5 Georgia runoff elections that will determine which party controls the United States Senate for the next two years.
Biden warned, according to The Intercept, that “civil rights leaders that [put] pressure on the incoming administration around police reform could hurt the party’s chances in the Georgia Senate runoffs, claiming that the Republicans’ ability to define that party as in favor of defunding the police is ‘how they beat the living hell out of us across the country.'”
…The stakes are clear. As Saul Anuzis, the former Michigan Republican Party chairman who now runs the conservative 60 Plus Association, told me, “Without Georgia, conservatives are at risk of losing everything they gained under Trump.” The list of things Biden has his eye on, as the former vice president said in Tuesday’s meeting, is long. He also faces the policies put in place over the last four years by executive orders which, he says, he’ll repeal.
That means a lot. “Conservatives shouldn’t underestimate the damage a politically motivated progressive left wing could do when the country is this polarized,” Anuzis said. “The outcome of the Georgia Senate races could determine the direction of this country for a generation to come.”
Raphael Warnock’s Lifelong Education in Black Liberation Theology and Radical Politics
As he looked into the crowd at the historic Riverside Church in Manhattan, the Reverend Raphael Warnock acknowledged that this eulogy was a difficult task, even for him.
A trained preacher and the senior pastor at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta – Martin Luther King Jr.’s church – Warnock had likely presided over hundreds of funerals by that point in his career. But this funeral, on a Monday in early May 2018, was different. It was the funeral for his mentor, James Hal Cone, the founding father of “black liberation theology” who had personally requested that Warnock deliver his eulogy.
Warnock praised Cone for his scholarship, for his passion, and for his fire. While most academics write and speak, “Dr. Cone roared.” Cone, he said, was “the best classroom teacher I ever had.”
“I learned so much from him about how to think,” said Warnock, dressed in a black and red robe, “how to interrogate and unmask the unacknowledged cultural biases and racist, sexist, and classist assumptions of dominant discourse.”
Warnock, 51, is now one of two Democratic nominees for U.S. Senate in Georgia looking to knock off Republican incumbents in a January 5 runoff. If both Democrats win, their party will take control of the Senate and consolidate elected power in Washington, D.C.
Trump blows a hole in the GOP on his way out
The result is that many of the party’s field officers in the states are preparing to dig in to ensure that Trump — and his style of politics — remains the party’s guiding light. That is putting them at cross-purposes with more traditionalist Republicans, such as Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who are positioning themselves as alternatives to Trump…
…Trump has suggested that he will run again, but many Republicans aren’t convinced. Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, said, “I suspect we’ll see 15 people running for president again next time around.”
The signs already point to a protracted intraparty war. In Arizona, where Trump was the first GOP nominee to lose since 1996, Daniel Barker, a former Arizona Court of Appeals judge who started a PAC of Republicans supporting Biden, said “there clearly is a major problem” in the Republican Party, even with Trump’s loss.
…But in the run-up to the campaign, the deck will be stacked in favor of Trump — or candidates who are in his good graces. Many state party chairs who were viewed as disloyal to the president have been ousted since his 2016 election, and many chairs who were initially skeptical of Trump have been won over by his popularity with the party’s base.
“All of these people, ironically or brilliantly, Trump was able to unite, to a large extent,” Anuzis said. “The hawks got a defense build-up, the Rand Pauls got a pull-out from the Middle East, … conservatives got their judges. … You can go through there and see how he was very adept at dealing with the various constituencies and making people feel good.”
That goes from top to bottom — from the RNC down to state and county parties, as well as local clubs that remain instrumental in off-year voter registration efforts and in fielding down-ballot candidates.
Why Government Cancelling Nativity Scenes and Holiday Displays Threatens Everyone’s Freedom
As millions of Americans prepare for an unconventional holiday season or even the possibility of Christmas being canceled, it appears that Illinois government officials are already deflating the cheer during “the most wonderful time of the year.”
The Illinois Secretary of State’s Office recently announced that decorations won’t be put up at the state capitol for the upcoming holidays. Typically, at this time of year, one would find a Christmas tree in the rotunda, along with a nativity scene, a menorah and even a “Winter Solstice” monument courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF).
For months, the building has been closed to the public due to the COVID-19 pandemic, restricting access only to people who work in the capitol. A spokesperson from the Secretary of State’s office stated that because there would be no incoming public to view the seasonal décor, the decision was reached to cancel all holiday displays, religious and secular.
At first glance, it might seem like having no holiday displays is a small inconvenience, and some would argue there’s no real need for the displays, as they’re nothing more than an artificial Christmas tree, some lights and an inanimate display of Joseph, Mary and Jesus.
There’s More to Politics Than Policy
It is tempting to treat elections as math problems, while ignoring the art required to assemble winning coalitions. Pollsters sort data along demographic groupings, data analysts dissect precinct-level trends, and ad makers consult focus groups to craft appealing messages. The result is policies designed to appeal to enough voters to win, presented by disciplined politicians in sound bites that are repeated relentlessly.
To win a primary, policies must appeal to chronic voters with strong single-issue preferences without turning off enough swing voters to lose the general election. Conservatives have to appeal to gun owners and evangelicals to win the primary, but take care not to alienate socially moderate suburban voters in the process. Liberals have to appeal to teacher unions, global-warming activists, pro-choice feminists and minorities to win the primary, but avoid losing fiscally moderate suburban voters in the general. This mechanical, calculating approach to politics is one reason voters discount political promises and the politicians who make them.
Donald Trump upended all this. He doesn’t carefully tailor his message or stick to tested and approved sound bites. His more straightforward, undisciplined approach elicits a visceral reaction from voters. Mr. Trump’s supporters are famously loyal, and his opponents suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Nobody is ambivalent about the president. He has his base’s trust precisely because he isn’t judicious with his words. While they often cringe at his demeanor, they trust him to say what he thinks.
Mr. Trump isn’t unique in harnessing his emotional connection with voters to create a durable bond. Policy has always been necessary but insufficient in politics. People vote in large part based on feelings, in addition to policy views. Mr. Trump gives his supporters permission to believe in America and be proudly patriotic. The working-class voters who form his base cheer his opposition to unfair trade deals and liberal immigration policies that they think threaten their jobs, but also adore him for his willingness to fight the elites that look down on them and him. Similarly, there are people who prefer Mr. Trump’s fiscal policies, but voted for Joe Biden because the president made their hearts recoil.
