Recent Comments

1. about 13 hours ago on Steve Benson

   If they tried to do that, they’d face a veto in those states with a Democratic governor, but a couple of said states have a super-majority of Republicans in the legislature that could override a veto.

2. about 14 hours ago on Steve Benson

   Well, in Wisconsin (and several other states), the Republican-dominated legislature would face the prospect of a veto from a Democratic governor. There are a handful more where both the legislature and the governor’s office are controlled by the GOP, but those are the ones likely to have gone for Trump anyway and so not relevant to this analysis.

   A case can be made (and of course, would be made) by the Republicans that the governor should have no role in choosing presidential electors, as is the case with ratification of Constitutional amendments. Any attempt to do so would bring on a different type of lawsuit from a different bunch of players, and the question probably wouldn’t have been decided by Dec. 14, when the law requires the duly “chosen” electors in each state to convene and cast their votes for president and vice-president. So it’s entirely possible that 2 different sets of electors in a given state, each claiming to be the legitimate one, would do that and submit their votes to Congress, leaving it up to Congress to sort it all out, as has happened a couple of times before. It could be a circus the likes of which the republic hasn’t seen since 1876, when Rutherford B. Hayes edged out Samuel Tilden (winner of the popular vote) by a single electoral vote, after 3 states had had their disputed set of electors resolved by the newly elected Congress.

   This information about casting and counting the electoral votes is interesting:

   https://history.house.gov/Institution/Electoral-College/Electoral-College/

   https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/blog/does-the-constitution-allow-for-a-delayed-presidential-election

3. about 15 hours ago on Tom Toles

   Regardless of motivation, if the effect is the same, we’re screwed again.

4. about 20 hours ago on Monty

   So let me see if I’ve got this straight. You praise him for having been in the general vicinity when Israel negotiated “peace” agreements between 2 tiny countries that it had never been at war with and, in the same breath, also praise him for pulling out of a peace agreement with the biggest, baddest, nuclear-capable player in the region. I guess if that’s the way your brain really works, of course you’d see the guy as a stable genius with a stable of accomplishments.

   Please don’t ever change your GoComics handle, so we can assign the proper degree of credibility to every future comment you make.

5. about 20 hours ago on Doonesbury

   “They threw it out” is different from amending it how, exactly? It was a contract. It was rendered moot. Not all parties to the original contract had to agree to that process (tho eventually all did, out of self-interest if nothing else). Even if we grant your technical distinction, the basic point remains the same: It could happen again.

6. about 20 hours ago on Rob Rogers

   Sinclair Lewis addressed that very issue back in 1935 with his novel It Can’t Happen Here, about a fascist takeover of America under the leadership of the charismatic President Buzz Windrip. He was based on Hitler, but some of his tactics should be familiar to anyone who’s paid attention to the news for the last 4 years.

7. about 20 hours ago on Rob Rogers

   “In fact the entire pro-Israel Jewish-Evangelical alliance comes down to not talking about ‘It‘ — the Apocalypse — or about how they’re both using each other and both consider the other equally insane.” —Mark Ames, New York Press, 2004 Oct. 12

8. about 20 hours ago on Rob Rogers

   This raises the one issue I have with absentee voting that I think is really legitimate: The possibility that a domineering husband will loom over his brow-beaten wife to make sure she votes “right” before sealing her ballot in the envelope. Frankly, I don’t have a clue what to do about it, but I’m sure it happens in a non-trivial number of cases.

9. about 20 hours ago on Rob Rogers

   The leading contender for filling the gaping hole on the Supreme Court left by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is Amy Coney Barrett. While she’s obviously female and obviously conservative, she’s less obviously a super-Catholic, and her ascension to the highest court in the land would move it from a 6-3 split between Catholics and Jews to 7-2. FWIW, according to Wikipedia, Catholics account for 20% of the US population and Jews for 2%. Not represented at all on the Supreme Court are the nation’s 43% Protestants, 26% unaffiliated, 2% Mormons, 1% each Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus, or 5% “other”. Any sense now of why feminists and liberals are worried sick about the future of Roe v. Wade?

10. about 20 hours ago on Steve Benson

    Not necessarily. Who chooses the electors? It’s up to each state to decide for itself. For over a century it’s been “whichever slate of electors is pledged to the candidate who wins the popular vote”. But there’s nothing to stop a Republican-dominated state legislature (like, say, my own here in Wisconsin) from just passing a law saying “We name these 10 people as Wisconsin’s official presidential electors” and picking the 10 from the losing slate. Sure, it would be instantly challenged in court, but what are the odds that such a challenge would be resolved by 1:00 PM on January 6?

    All of this was discussed at greater length in a recent article in The Atlantic. It’s sobering reading.