RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/529717-100-house-republicans-sign-brief-backing-texas-suit-challenging-election

More than 100 House Republicans on Thursday signed onto an amicus brief in support of the Texas lawsuit aimed at overturning the election results in four swing states — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that handed Democrat Joe Biden the White House.

“This brief presents [our] concern as Members of Congress, shared by untold millions of their constituents, that the unconstitutional irregularities involved in the 2020 presidential election cast doubt upon its outcome and the integrity of the American system of elections,” states the brief from GOP lawmakers.

Outgoing Republican Study Committee Chairman Mike Johnson (R-La.) — one of President Trump’s closest allies in the House, having served on his impeachment defense team — helped lead the effort to garner support from his GOP colleagues on the brief. 

Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), another top Trump ally, was not among the signatories.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/76332-texas-to-the-rescue-2020-12-09

The Lone Star State’s attorney general has filed a different kind of election suit with the Supreme Court.

If President Donald Trump isn’t jetting off to Mar-a-Lago on January 20, he may well have Ken Paxton to thank for it. Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, filed a pleading with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday in a way that’s attracted the attention of some pretty astute legal minds.

Essentially, Texas is arguing that the electoral processes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were unconstitutional, and that the results in those states should be negated. And because this is a lawsuit between states, the Supreme Court has original and exclusive jurisdiction.

Power Line’s John Hinderaker calls it a “Hail Mary,” but anyone who follows football knows that a successful Hail Mary isn’t nearly as far-fetched as, say, an incoherent and utterly uninspiring presidential candidate getting millions more population-adjusted votes than the most appealing and charismatic candidate in modern history.

As Hinderaker writes, “The Texas motion and supporting brief are well-drafted and make a plausible case — importantly, one that, if accepted, does not require extensive fact-finding into alleged voter fraud. Reduced to its essentials, the motion alleges 1) that under the Constitution’s Electors Clause, state legislatures have plenary authority over appointment of each state’s electors; 2) that in each of the defendant states, non-legislative actors (e.g., the Secretary of State) unconstitutionally changed the rules governing this year’s election without legislative approval or ratification; 3) that these changes favored some voters over others, in violation of the [Constitution’s] Equal Protection Clause; and 4) in each state, the number of ballots that were counted pursuant to unconstitutional changes in election procedures exceeds the margin of Joe Biden’s alleged victory.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2020/12/09/nyt-oped-writer-why-did-so-many-americans-vote-for-donald-trump-again-n2581308

Democrats may be glad that Joe Biden appears to be on the cusp of officially clinching the presidency, but there’s a bit of confusion as well. Folks, the Trump campaign and its allies have yet to secure a decisive court win to continue their fight in exposing the mountain of voter fraud allegations. It’s a high bar concerning proving such fraud was so rampant and systemic that ballots should be tossed. It’s not in the cards right now. So, as Joe Biden picks his nominees for cabinet positions, hordes of liberals are celebrating, but there are some who know this really wasn’t the win they were looking for; they wanted a blue wave to crush Trumpism. Instead, Trumpism is here to stay. Donald Trump secured the most votes for re-election for an incumbent president in American history. Democrats weren’t able to retake key state legislatures which means the GOP still controls the lion’s share of mapping those congressional districts. Democrats lost seats in the House; it will be their smallest majority since the New Deal. And if things go well in the Georgia runoffs and the GOP retains the Senate, not much is going to happen for the Biden presidency.

I didn’t want this. I wanted Trump to crush Biden and perhaps if he just let the former VP hang himself with his own words in the first debate, things could have been different. Yet, a New York Times op-ed wonders why so many people voted for Trump. Here were the reasons he offered, while also giving a slight warning to the progressive left towards the end (via NYT):

Democrats, struggling to make sense of it all, are locked in yet another round of mutual recrimination: They were either too progressive for swing voters — too socialist or aggressive with ambitious policies like the Green New Deal — or not progressive enough to inspire potential Democratic voters to show up or cross over.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/09/a-reminder-about-us/

“I’m betting on America the exceptional and its exceptional people, but whether your gut tells you we are going to win or that the best we can hope for is to go down fighting, I urge you to get in the fight. We can all do our part to make every effort to light a fire under Republican officials, demanding that they fight with everything they have.  The Republicans need to get real and put up the kind of all-out political fight that can save them from political extinction, and save the Constitution while they are at it. You know what you can do to help. Do it, I beseech you.”

Republicans need to get real and put up the kind of all-out political fight that can save them from political extinction—and save the Constitution while they are at it.

In his splendid little book American Exceptionalism, Charles Murray reminds us it was foreigners who took the lead in claiming Americans are different:

For whatever else these observers might say about the United States, they all agreed on one thing: the United States was quite unlike their own or any other nation. It was exceptional.

The people who came to America were different from their neighbors who stayed behind—more self-reliant, more resourceful, more willing to face great challenges in order to seize the opportunities life in America offered. America was different because Americans were different. 

Most of us have a sense of that difference, I think, and when we travel to foreign lands we are often reminded of it. Everyone who has traveled abroad has his own stories. Here is a characteristic one from the American novelist John Updike:

Once, in Kenya, I was in a safari van that broke down. The driver, a black African, and the English passengers in the van sat back waiting in the dusty heat for the notified authorities to send a repairman to us. The Americans in the van, including me, though I know little about engines, insisted on popping the hood and trying to fix the machine themselves . . . the Americans were happily willing to go from being docile passengers to dynamic auto mechanics. They felt equal to the task.

For it to work, the American Idea—government by, for, and of the people under the Constitution—requires American citizens who have that certain something that sets Americans apart. 

Today, the brazen attempt to steal the presidential election raises a question: will Americans sit in the back of the van waiting for the notified authorities to rescue them from this breakdown in America’s constitutional order? Or will they pop the hood and set about fixing the engine themselves because they feel equal to the task? 

https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/09/georgia-democrat-raphael-warnock-says-he-didnt-praise-murderous-dictator-fidel-castro-heres-video-of-him-doing-it/

Georgia Democrat Senate candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock praised communist Cuban dictator Fidel Castor, who is responsible for tens of thousands of brutal state murders, in a sermon in 2016 days after the dictator passed away. A recently resurfaced video from 2016 shows Warnock behind his church’s podium, giving a eulogy for the authoritarian to his congregation.

“We pray for the people of Cuba in this moment. We remember Fidel Castro, whose legacy is complex. Don’t let anyone tell you a simple story; life usually isn’t very simple. His legacy is complex, kind of like America’s legacy is complex,” Warnock said.

“While we focus on political prisoners in Cuba, you saw the folks standing here this morning,” he continued. “If some people get slapped on the hand for the same crime and others go to federal prison, then we too have our own political prisons because politics more than the crime politics of race and class. And in that sense, many of us have sisters and brothers who are political prisoners. We are about to pray to a man who was a political prisoner.”