RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectator.org/election-resistance-sedition/

It was inevitable that the Democrats would overreact to legal challenges by President Trump and other Republicans to corrupt election practices in swing states, but some responses have been unhinged even by their standards. One recurring refrain is particularly disturbing — that lawyers, members of Congress, and state attorneys general who supported post-election litigation are guilty of sedition. At least one Democratic congressman insists that attorneys representing the president in such challenges should be disbarred and that House members who supported Texas v. Pennsylvania in the Supreme Court shouldn’t be seated in Congress. One of the defendants in that ill-fated lawsuit described it as a “seditious abuse of the judicial process.”

This dangerous view of dissent has a long, sordid history among progressives. Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, for example, was the driving force behind the notorious Sedition Act of 1918, passed by his fellow Democrats at a time when they controlled both houses of Congress. This anti-democratic outrage made it a felony crime to criticize the government and, by extension, Wilson himself. A violation of the Sedition Act was punishable by a fine of as much as $10,000 and imprisonment for as long as 20 years. More than 2,000 American citizens were arrested and prosecuted pursuant to the Sedition Act. This crime against democracy was at length repealed by the Republicans after the GOP won majorities in both houses of Congress in the 1918 midterm elections.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/19/a-betrayal-of-american-freedom/

At the moment, the world seems to be divided into two camps. 

One camp belongs to those who believe that Joe Biden, notwithstanding some possible election “irregularities,” won the 2020 presidential election fair and square. A corollary of this belief is the conviction that Donald Trump, by refusing to concede and go graciously into the good night of political defeat, is behaving badly (one venue even describes his behavior as a “disgrace”).

The second camp, which is where I reside, holds that the 2020 election was inherently fraudulent, that the fraud was perpetrated in ways large and small over many months, and that it appears to have cost Donald Trump the election. I say “appears” because the reality, I believe, is that Donald Trump won by a significant margin but that voter fraud obscures that reality. 

The first camp seems to be the larger of the two and its membership is growing quickly as more and more erstwhile supporters of the president fold their tents and make their peace with “President-elect Biden.” Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, was a recent high-profile defector from President Trump’s side.

Or maybe he is only a realist who sees the writing on the wall, not to mention the headlines in the papers and on CNN. 

Over the last few weeks, I have written about the election so many times that my fingers feel hoarse. 

I don’t know that those promising a sudden, awe-inspiring revelation are right. The much anticipated “Krakens” so far have looked more like crayfish than mighty monsters. But that does not gainsay the massive statistical anomalies that attended the voting in key battleground states. Nor does it put to bed other concerns: eye-popping voter turnout in just a few critical cities, worrisome irregularities with the tsunami of absentee ballots—nearly 60 percent of the vote, apparently—and hundreds of sworn affidavits attesting to mishandling of ballots, obstruction of GOP observers, and various forms of outright voter fraud. There are also the charges of the vote being manipulated by Dominion voting machines. I have read many stories about that, some affirming it, some rejecting it. To me, it smells fishy, but I have no privileged knowledge one way or the other. 

President Trump has not fared well with his legal battles, but that has not dimmed his determination to fight on, much to the dismay, indeed, the fury, of his critics in both parties (actually, I think it is basically one big party, but that is an issue for another day). 

https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/19/americas-trudeau/

Crucial stretches of the Korean War, which never officially ended, took place during The Coldest Winter (David Halberstam’s term) and American forces fought it out with the troops of Kim Il Sung and Mao Zedong’s Communist China. In 1962, that nation saw a record low temperature of negative 62.1 Fahrenheit, or minus 52.3 Celsius, and in recent years temperatures in China have dropped to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit and Celsius, the point at which the two scales converge. 

Given the frosty record, Canadians were surprised to learn that the government Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had invited troops from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for “winter survival training exercises” at the Canadian Armed Forces base at Petawawa, Ontario. 

Chief of Defense Staff Jonathan Vance canceled the training when China kidnapped Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in December 2018. The capture of the “two Michaels,” as they have become known, came after Canada arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, sought in the United States for fraud. Secret government documents obtained by Rebel News name Meng Wenzhou, but not Kovrig and Spavor, who show up only as “consular cases,” with no reference to their status as hostages. 

Days after the November election, Prime Minister Trudeau spoke with Joe Biden about the Canadian hostage, now held for more than two years. Trudeau said China’s “approach of coercive diplomacy is ineffective.” What Joe Biden said did not emerge and Canadians might wonder about Biden’s record on China. 

On a visit to Beijing in 2013, then-Vice President Biden called on those Chinese seeking residency in the United States to “challenge the government, challenge your teachers, challenge religious leaders.” That was “Biden’s Important Message for Human Rights in China,” as The Atlantic headlined the story. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/12/failed-mayor-atlanta-under-investig

Hey Joe, you can’t just buy off Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta with any old cabinet position. It must be a position commensurate with her incredible talents.

Joe Biden implored Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms to accept a job heading the Small Business Administration earlier this week, a lesser position she rejected after he characterized it as “only the first step” for her during his presidency, according to people familiar with the discussion.

“Implored”. 

Lance Bottoms, a rising African American star and favorite of powerful Rep. James Clyburn, is open to serving in the Cabinet during his term if the role is right, one person told Axios.

Clyburn, if you recall, handed the primary to Biden, and has a lot of chips to call in.

Bottoms’ allies describe her as a family-oriented politician — she has four young children — who’s weighing the massive lifestyle change a move to Washington, D.C. would require against the nature of the work she’d be undertaking.

While interested in small business development, leading a Cabinet-level agency like SBA was not the right fit for the chief executive of a major city — a position of considerable clout in the New South that Lance Bottoms loves, one person familiar with her thinking told Axios.

Considerable clout. You can’t just offer Bottoms any position. It’s gotta be a lot more important than a mere pork factory like the SBA. Not when you’re dealing with the incredible dynamo running the Atlanta hellscape into the ground after battling her ethics issues.

The court date has been reset for Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms to respond to a subpoena for alleged ethics violations.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/12/who_has_the_power_to_appoint_presidential_electors.html

Now that inferior election officials in Arizona have rejected a legally issued legislative subpoena from the Arizona Senate Judiciary committee to turn over Dominion machines and software for inspection, the Legislature of Arizona must use its enforcement powers to compel these officials to respect their plenary authority over presidential elector appointment.

But what enforcement authority is available to the Arizona Legislature?  It’s not the Judiciary.  And it’s not a sheriff, or state capital police.  The Arizona Legislature has plenary authority over appointing presidential electors.  All it has to do is self-convene by quorum in each branch, or by joint ballot, then vote to send Trump electors; then send the slate to Washington, D.C.  That’s how you enforce the subpoena.

But then you do one more thing, Arizona Legislature.  You sprint into federal district court, and you demand a Writ of Prohibition against Vice President Pence, ordering him not to open the previous slate of presidential electors sent by Arizona.  And you will win that writ.  Here’s why:

3 USC §§5–15 ARE UNCONSTITUTIONAL

Congress cannot order a state Legislature regarding how to exercise its plenary authority.  All Congress can do is set the time presidential electors must be appointed (see the federal Election Day statute) and when electors must meet and give their ballots.  My previous report on the timing proved that the hard deadline is January 4, 2021 and that December 14 was not the last possible date.  There’s still time for each contested result to be set straight by the state Legislatures.

Everyone should read and study the undisputed SCOTUS precedent on plenary authority of the state Legislatures over choosing presidential electors, McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U.S. 1, 36 (1892):

‘Whatever provisions may be made by statute, or by the state constitution, to choose electors by the people, there is no doubt of the right of the legislature to resume the power at any time, for it can neither be taken away nor abdicated.’

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/12/as_runoffs_loom_georgias_election_integrity_is_a_joke.html

Although it seems as though it took place long ago, in a year that has seemed to drag on from one low point to another, the November 3 election happened less than seven weeks ago.  Ever since then, countless personal accounts of election irregularities, conflicting reporting from partisan media, and the numerous delays from many GOP leaders in accepting the possibility of Joe Biden being sworn in as our 46th president have been the political reality in America.

At the core of our current state of disputation is the question of election integrity.  We’ve seen numerous legal challenges and thousands of affidavits filed and have had to go through the exercise of observing “social media lawyers” misusing legalese and framing irrelevant or fallacious arguments, and yet we still do not know how safe and secure the American election system really is going forward, post-2020.

In the state of Georgia, where the eyes of the nation have turned in advance of a set of pivotal Senate elections that will determine control of Congress’s upper chamber, Republicans have already filed two federal and one state-level lawsuit related to the January 5 run-offs, which have already seen hundreds of thousands of people vote by mail or in person.  The legal challenges primarily centered on the use of drop-boxes for returning absentee ballots as well as raising the level of scrutiny applied in verifying signatures on those ballots.

The two federal suits were dismissed by district judges in the past few days; they opined that the Republican plaintiffs, who were a combination of local, state, and national Republican Party groups, lacked legal standing for their arguments.