RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/04/losing-would-be-a-fitting-coda-for-the-feckless-gop-senate/

It should surprise no one that the Republican Senate—the most inept collection of politicians in recent memory—will end the Trump era in a state of disarray, discord, and dysfunction.

What Americans have witnessed over the past four years, as I’ve written several times, is a textbook example of political power squandered. Republican senators, rather than maximize the unexpected gift of a Republican White House, Senate, and House of Representatives to advance long-promised “conservative” policies, wasted the opportunity while giving political cover to both the corrupt president who preceded Donald Trump and the one who will succeed him.

The first half of Trump’s presidency was sabotaged by a special counsel investigation into Russian collusion, an imaginary crime that Senate Republicans knew was a farce from the start, yet defended anyway. While Robert Mueller’s partisan probe obscured the real scandal—the unprecedented abuse of the country’s law enforcement and surveillance apparatus to target a rival presidential candidate and then incoming president—Republicans in charge of powerful Senate committees did little more than write stern letters and make empty threats on cable news shows in a failed attempt to “get to the bottom” of Russiagate.

Investigations into the Biden family’s overseas racket were slow-walked; Republicans refused to compel Hunter Biden to testify in the president’s impeachment trial, an event that would have torpedoed Biden’s candidacy and elevated a surefire loser such as Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket.

A once-in-a-generation chance to purge the Beltway of fossilized institutionalists was bypassed. Ditto for major reforms of immigration law, foreign affairs, trade agreements, federal regulations, and climate change activism. The president almost single-handedly retooled failed national policies through executive orders or administrative decree; in most cases, especially related to U.S. military presence abroad, Senate Republicans thwarted rather than aided the Trump Administration.

“Conservative” achievements over the past four years belong solely to the president and his team, not to congressional Republicans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivFxwlMgaJg&feature=youtu.be

https://www.theepochtimes.com/peter-navarro-says-inauguration-day-can-be-postpo

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said in an interview on Fox News that the Jan. 20 date of Inauguration Day could be changed.

Navarro made the remarks on “Justice With Judge Jeanine” on Jan. 2, in the context of a recent call by 11 Republican senators for Congress to appoint an electoral commission to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election results.

Program host Judge Jeanine Pirro asked Navarro about his expectations for the effort, saying, “All this has to happen before January 20. Do you have any hope that this can succeed?”

“Vice President Pence, he has the authority to give that 10-day window to do what needs to get done,” Navarro said. “I cannot imagine when he looks at the facts he won’t vote the right way on that.”

Pirro responded by saying that the “10-day window” could change the date for certification of electoral votes planned for the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress, chaired by Pence, when lawmakers certify the votes cast for the U.S. president by members of the Electoral College.

“January 20 cannot be changed; that’s constitutional,” Pirro added, presumably referring to Section 1 of the 20th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states: “The terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January … and the terms of their successors shall then begin.”

“It can be changed, actually,” Navarro said. “We can go past that date. We can go past that date if we need to. And we have got to get this right. … We need to take [the election] back for the people.”

Pirro didn’t ask Navarro to clarify further. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Navarro’s remarks.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/04/ignoring-and-ridiculing-election-fraud-concerns-will-not-make-them-go-away/

Restoration of trust in due process is the central goal of the statement issued by Sen. Ted Cruz on election integrity. He and the 11 other senators who signed it understand something that few officials and pundits—particularly many self-described conservatives—are willing to admit: to certify electors without a comprehensive investigation into thousands of allegations of fraud in the 2020 election would be a betrayal of Americans’ trust as well as an egregious violation of their oath to protect the Constitution.

Whether or not you agree there was massive electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential election does not really matter at this point. Every American should be deeply concerned if nearly half of all voters are convinced that large-scale fraud handed the election to the Biden-Harris ticket. Some may hope the conviction will fade with time, but more likely the distrust will deepen, especially since it comes despite non-stop denials and censorship about fraud by both Big Tech and Big Media.

Rasmussen’s poll indicates that 47 percent of voters believe fraud swayed the election (and 75 percent of Republicans). Some dismiss Rasmussen as leaning to the right. But even standard left-leaning pollsters such as Quinnipiac and Reuters consistently claim that half of Republicans believe there was massive fraud.

The BBC and other mainstream media went into meltdown today over a phone call on Saturday in which, they claimed, President Donald Trump had pressured Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes to alter Trump’s election defeat in the state.

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/the-trump-raffensperger-phone-call?token=eyJ1c2

This allegation came from a Washington Post “exclusive”, a leaked audio recording and transcript of the hour-long call. The paper reported:

The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk.”

Throughout the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected Trump’s assertions, explaining that the president is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.

The media zeroed in on this in particular:

At another point, Trump said: “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/election_2020_the_consequences_for_the_courts.html

Unlike committed partisans on both sides of America’s political divide, I have no fixed belief about which of the two major party candidates actually won our recently concluded presidential election.

Two things that I do know are that:

1.  Significant and obviously plausible questions have been put forth about the announced results, the manner in which the election was conducted in certain key states, and how the votes were counted in those states, and

2.  Our courts, on technical and procedural grounds, have refused each and every one of a great many efforts to have the above-mentioned questions resolved through an established legal process. 

The desire of judges to avoid jeopardizing the prestige, standing, and stability of the courts as an institution by avoiding involvement in the ugly political mud brawl is understandable.  However, the inevitable consequences of their insistence on remaining above the fray will do the opposite of safeguarding the judiciary, the nation’s institutions, and a peaceable civil society. 

The courts and common law of England — the forerunner and basis for our judicial system — were established and developed to provide a peaceful way for aggrieved individuals to obtain justice without resorting to violence.  Now, as a result of the refusal of the courts to objectively and transparently examine and adjudicate the disputes about the election and its outcome, roughly half the country is being left enraged without any legal way to have the issues adjudicated.  Thus, a very large number of Americans are in the same position as were Englishmen when violence was the only means for resolving strongly held grievances prior to the establishment of a legal system.

That, I submit, does not bode well for the country.