As commander-in-chief, the president is the only individual with the authority to order the use of nuclear weapons. The National Command Authority comprising the president and Secretary of Defense must jointly authenticate the order to use nuclear weapons….. and that would be the newly appointed Chris Miller, appointed by tweet on November 9th….
Trump is right, the Constitution only states that states appoint Electors to the Electoral College. The Constitution says nothing about popular vote.
Therefore, to return the Electoral College to its original functioning form, that would make the race for president nothing more than a survey of state legislatures and governors.
Is this what we really want?
Honestly, I can’t say which is worse.
An Electoral College like we have today, functioning like a dysfunctional gerrymander, or an Electoral College that doesn’t even want to know the popular vote.
Republicans and Democrats alike: Everyone’s vote is tampered with by the Electoral College. Republicans who feel their votes in California and New York don’t count because of how Electors are assigned. Democrats who feel their votes don’t count when the popular vote gets reversed.
And just in case you think your state is going to be ignored, guess what? It probably already is. Let’s face it: The electoral map today consists of Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia.
But thanks to a bit of McCain bashing, okay, this year, Arizona got into the mix.
The rest of you? Your vote is either presumed a foregone conclusion or your state is so small, you don’t really matter.
Does anyone care that Nebraska and Maine actually split their Electoral College delegations?
Honestly, is this the way we want to run our elections?
In late October, a federal judge denied the Department of Justice’s effort to fend off rape allegations against President Donald Trump in a defamation suit on the taxpayer’s dime, but the court’s docket did not catch up with that reality for weeks.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan made the record abundantly clear in a 1-page order on Friday.
“[T]he docket sheet erroneously lists Mr. [Stephen] Terrell and another attorney as counsel for defendant Trump,” Kaplan wrote, referring to a Justice Department lawyer. “That is incorrect. They represent only the United States.”
Carroll says that Trump defamed her by denying that he raped her in the dressing room of the department store Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s.
The Justice Department tried to barge into the case in September, insisting that Trump responding to rape allegations with comments like “She’s not my type” is just one of the duties befitting of the President of the United States.
Carroll’s legal described that proposition as wrong and obscene the next month.
“There is not a single person in the United States — not the president and not anyone else — whose job description includes slandering women they sexually assaulted,” attorney Roberta Kaplan wrote last month in a blistering legal brief.
“That should not be a controversial proposition.
Remarkably, however, the Justice Department seeks to prove it wrong.”
The Justice Department nevertheless persisted, only for Judge Kaplan to reject their effort mere days before the presidential election.
“As explained above, the undisputed facts demonstrate that President Trump was not acting in furtherance of any duties owed to any arguable employer when he made the statements at issue,” the judge said.
Another bid by an ally of President Donald Trump to overturn the results of this month’s election was roundly rejected in court on Thursday, as a federal judge appointed by Trump turned down a bid to block the certification of President-elect Joe Biden as the victor in Georgia.
At the conclusion of a three-hour virtual hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Steven Grimberg delivered a withering assessment of the suit that a prominent attorney, Lin Wood, filed to try to stop officials from finalizing a tally that has Trump trailing Biden by more than 12,000 votes.
Grimberg said it was clear that, as an individual voter, Wood lacked legal standing to mount the challenge to Georgia’s election procedures.
But the judge — a former prosecutor whom Trump nominated last year — also emphasized that evidence of improprieties seemed limited to isolated cases and far short of what would be needed to justify a federal judge stepping in to alter the state’s election results.
“It would require halting the certification of results in a state election in which millions of people have voted,” the judge said. “It would interfere with an election after the voting was done.”
✁
Much of Wood’s suit complained about a consent decree, reached in March, that requires officials to try to contact a voter before disqualifying a mail-in ballot because of a signature that does not appear to match the one on file.
However, Russ Willard, a lawyer in the Georgia attorney general’s office, said there was no legitimate reason for Wood to come to court eight months later to object to that widely publicized deal.
“Plaintiff attempts to change the rules at the end of the game in order to alter the score,” Willard said.
Here’s a guessing game that perfectly suits the sad state of affairs in the U.S. Senate: How long until the number of Republicans who accept Joe Biden as the president-elect surpasses the number of them who have tested positive for the coronavirus?
At the moment, the virus is winning.
Rick Scott of Florida announced Friday that he has tested positive for COVID-19, making him the seventh GOP senator infected by the deadly disease.
The others are Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Mike Lee (Utah), Bill Cassidy (La.), Rand Paul (Ky.), Thom Tillis (N.C.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.). Paul was the first to test positive, back in March; Grassley and Scott revealed their infections this week.
Meanwhile, it’s been nearly two weeks since Biden won enough states to become the president-elect but the vast majority of GOP senators are refusing to publicly acknowledge it.
As of Friday, HuffPost counts just five Senate Republicans who have said Biden won or referred to him as the president-elect: Mitt Romney (Utah), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Susan Collins (Maine), Ben Sasse (Neb.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.).
That leaves the remaining 48 GOP senators complicit in President Donald Trump’s efforts to undermine people’s faith in democratic institutions to try to make it look like he won.
This guy says democracy was dream we all had… more an anomaly than a natural state. Disturbing, but democracy generally dies by its own hand. Having had Trump, and tried to keep him, why should we think it’s all better now?
• The Silenced Majority: Can America still afford democracy? Trump’s baleful theatrics have distracted us from the broader disintegration of the 20th-century interregnum, of which he is only a symptom. That process has much further to go, and will produce dangers greater than he. (Harper’s Magazine) https://harpers.org/archive/2020/12/the-silenced-majority/
Cheapskate0 over 3 years ago
Even then, so the Bible says, no rest for the wicked…
feverjr Premium Member over 3 years ago
As commander-in-chief, the president is the only individual with the authority to order the use of nuclear weapons. The National Command Authority comprising the president and Secretary of Defense must jointly authenticate the order to use nuclear weapons….. and that would be the newly appointed Chris Miller, appointed by tweet on November 9th….
Now do you feel calmer???
Cheapskate0 over 3 years ago
National Popular Vote!
Give the devil his due.
Trump is right, the Constitution only states that states appoint Electors to the Electoral College. The Constitution says nothing about popular vote.
Therefore, to return the Electoral College to its original functioning form, that would make the race for president nothing more than a survey of state legislatures and governors.
Is this what we really want?
Honestly, I can’t say which is worse.
An Electoral College like we have today, functioning like a dysfunctional gerrymander, or an Electoral College that doesn’t even want to know the popular vote.
Republicans and Democrats alike: Everyone’s vote is tampered with by the Electoral College. Republicans who feel their votes in California and New York don’t count because of how Electors are assigned. Democrats who feel their votes don’t count when the popular vote gets reversed.
And just in case you think your state is going to be ignored, guess what? It probably already is. Let’s face it: The electoral map today consists of Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia.
But thanks to a bit of McCain bashing, okay, this year, Arizona got into the mix.
The rest of you? Your vote is either presumed a foregone conclusion or your state is so small, you don’t really matter.
Does anyone care that Nebraska and Maine actually split their Electoral College delegations?
Honestly, is this the way we want to run our elections?
Sanspareil over 3 years ago
The peace of the grave is all we can hope for!
Silly Season over 3 years ago
In late October, a federal judge denied the Department of Justice’s effort to fend off rape allegations against President Donald Trump in a defamation suit on the taxpayer’s dime, but the court’s docket did not catch up with that reality for weeks.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan made the record abundantly clear in a 1-page order on Friday.
“[T]he docket sheet erroneously lists Mr. [Stephen] Terrell and another attorney as counsel for defendant Trump,” Kaplan wrote, referring to a Justice Department lawyer. “That is incorrect. They represent only the United States.”
Carroll says that Trump defamed her by denying that he raped her in the dressing room of the department store Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s.
The Justice Department tried to barge into the case in September, insisting that Trump responding to rape allegations with comments like “She’s not my type” is just one of the duties befitting of the President of the United States.
Carroll’s legal described that proposition as wrong and obscene the next month.
“There is not a single person in the United States — not the president and not anyone else — whose job description includes slandering women they sexually assaulted,” attorney Roberta Kaplan wrote last month in a blistering legal brief.
“That should not be a controversial proposition.
Remarkably, however, the Justice Department seeks to prove it wrong.”
The Justice Department nevertheless persisted, only for Judge Kaplan to reject their effort mere days before the presidential election.
“As explained above, the undisputed facts demonstrate that President Trump was not acting in furtherance of any duties owed to any arguable employer when he made the statements at issue,” the judge said.
~
https://lawandcrime.com/awkward/federal-judge-strikes-doj-from-the-docket-in-e-jean-carrolls-case-against-donald-trump/
Silly Season over 3 years ago
Another bid by an ally of President Donald Trump to overturn the results of this month’s election was roundly rejected in court on Thursday, as a federal judge appointed by Trump turned down a bid to block the certification of President-elect Joe Biden as the victor in Georgia.
At the conclusion of a three-hour virtual hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Steven Grimberg delivered a withering assessment of the suit that a prominent attorney, Lin Wood, filed to try to stop officials from finalizing a tally that has Trump trailing Biden by more than 12,000 votes.
Grimberg said it was clear that, as an individual voter, Wood lacked legal standing to mount the challenge to Georgia’s election procedures.
But the judge — a former prosecutor whom Trump nominated last year — also emphasized that evidence of improprieties seemed limited to isolated cases and far short of what would be needed to justify a federal judge stepping in to alter the state’s election results.
“It would require halting the certification of results in a state election in which millions of people have voted,” the judge said. “It would interfere with an election after the voting was done.”
✁
Much of Wood’s suit complained about a consent decree, reached in March, that requires officials to try to contact a voter before disqualifying a mail-in ballot because of a signature that does not appear to match the one on file.
However, Russ Willard, a lawyer in the Georgia attorney general’s office, said there was no legitimate reason for Wood to come to court eight months later to object to that widely publicized deal.
“Plaintiff attempts to change the rules at the end of the game in order to alter the score,” Willard said.
~
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/19/federal-judge-rejects-trump-allys-bid-block-election-certification-georgia-438563
Silly Season over 3 years ago
Here’s a guessing game that perfectly suits the sad state of affairs in the U.S. Senate: How long until the number of Republicans who accept Joe Biden as the president-elect surpasses the number of them who have tested positive for the coronavirus?
At the moment, the virus is winning.
Rick Scott of Florida announced Friday that he has tested positive for COVID-19, making him the seventh GOP senator infected by the deadly disease.
The others are Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Mike Lee (Utah), Bill Cassidy (La.), Rand Paul (Ky.), Thom Tillis (N.C.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.). Paul was the first to test positive, back in March; Grassley and Scott revealed their infections this week.
Meanwhile, it’s been nearly two weeks since Biden won enough states to become the president-elect but the vast majority of GOP senators are refusing to publicly acknowledge it.
As of Friday, HuffPost counts just five Senate Republicans who have said Biden won or referred to him as the president-elect: Mitt Romney (Utah), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Susan Collins (Maine), Ben Sasse (Neb.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.).
That leaves the remaining 48 GOP senators complicit in President Donald Trump’s efforts to undermine people’s faith in democratic institutions to try to make it look like he won.
~
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/republican-senators-covid-joe-biden-election_n_5fb7d9bbc5b6f6adf949f36b
William Robbins Premium Member over 3 years ago
This guy says democracy was dream we all had… more an anomaly than a natural state. Disturbing, but democracy generally dies by its own hand. Having had Trump, and tried to keep him, why should we think it’s all better now?
• The Silenced Majority: Can America still afford democracy? Trump’s baleful theatrics have distracted us from the broader disintegration of the 20th-century interregnum, of which he is only a symptom. That process has much further to go, and will produce dangers greater than he. (Harper’s Magazine) https://harpers.org/archive/2020/12/the-silenced-majority/
Bradley Walker over 3 years ago
Exhaustion from emotional whiplash count?