When pestered with questions about how and why they would gather conservative activists, ask them to masquerade as the real electors in the 2020 election, waiting in the wings to be called forth, acolytes of the former President constantly return to one argument: They didn’t know that what creating fake elector slates was wrong.
I expect maybe a bit better results than 1 for 62, but still well below the Mendoza Line.
Oh, Fr1!!!ST!
Somehow, some way, I have been in legal hell for quite a while already - that includes SCOTUS and the fully stacked AZ Supreme Court. How long can the center hold?
With the ability of one crazy judge in Texas to almost wipe out the ACA, and watching just the beginning hijinks of some of Trump’s crazier appointments to the Federal bench, I feel like legal hell might be the new definition for the U.S.
It’s one thing to prepare alternate elector slates in case they’re needed. They filed the fake electors with the government stating they were the real electors. That’s the crime.
Nothing wrong with having alternate documents sitting in a file cabinet in case they’re needed. Trying to steal an election is a crime.
It is a goddamned lie that the Hawaiian electors had to vote by December 14, 1960. That’s just the safe harbor deadline under the Electoral Count Act. All it means is that if the electoral votes are held before the safe harbor deadline, Congress will presume they are valid. But when the electors themselves haven’t been deemed elected by December 14, they can still vote right on up to January 6 if need be, and Congress can still accept their votes.
This bullshit about the mid-December “deadline” has been a thing on the right ever since the Supreme Court used it as an excuse to shut down the Florida recount by improperly divining that Florida law thought safe harbor was more important than getting the popular vote right.
Thanks for the bird pic.
In the last two weeks, I’ve spotted three species of sparrow sized birds here, in NYC, that I hadn’t noticed before. They were all pretty cool and pleasant to look at.
Fall is always a good time to spot migrants just passing through for as little as a day or two.
“They can even run mentally defective candidates who can barely speak, and not only expect them to win, but expect you to accept the outcome no matter how transparently absurd it is,” Carlson said.
Uh, Tucker?
Black-throated Green Warbler. Male in breeding plumage, so presumably not photographed recently…
They’re all in Central America now avoiding all the mid-term election stress.
Needs more photos. 
Yup, photographed in Maine back in May.
Sandhill cranes are migrating down the Rio Grande now. A large flock of them were foraging in a harvested and mowed corn field yesterday morning. When I rode by on the irrigation ditch bank road they IDed me as a predator and there were 50 or more circling and squawking above me in the bright blue morning sky.
Trump will be indicted. That seems to be a forgotten event
While breathlessly reporting every slip of the tongue from “the oldest President in US history”
Most of the migrants have passed through here (E. MA) by now, though the coast will continue to see waterfowl migration through the end of the year. Cape Cod has a bit of a microclimate, and holds on longer than most places. A pretty unusual sighting of a vermillion flycatcher occurred there last week.
So when does congress pass the new legislation brought on by the clusterfuck of the last election?
.016
definitely not big league
Honestly hard to see why a charge of incitement against Carlson isn’t merited.
Here is an item that concerns me - especially if the GQP gains control of the House and even more so if they gain both House & Senate
TWENTY-FIFTH AMENDMENT
SECTION 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the
Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President
who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of
both Houses of Congress.
Should it come to pass that VP Harris assumes the presidency
it is almost a certainty that a Majority GQP will refuse to confirm any nominee she might put forward - unless it is one that they get to designate.
I don’t think that anyone - when the 25th Amendment was crafted - considered the possibility that a President’s nominee would be denied confirmation. Thus there does not appear to be any codified “next steps” should such an impasse occur. Does the VP position simply remain “vacant” for the duration?
NOTE: The order of succession specifies that the office passes to the vice president; if the vice presidency is simultaneously vacant, or if the vice president is also incapacitated, the powers and duties of the presidency pass to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, president pro tempore of the Senate, and then Cabinet secretaries, depending on eligibility.
So, for as long as the lack of a “conformation by a majority of both houses” exists - the Speaker of the House of Representatives is next in line - a heart beat away -
…which opens things up to a whole vile Pandora’s box of fuckery!
Excellent post, I was about to write much the same. I particularly like the word “excuse” in your comment:
The Supreme Court, as Sandra Day O’Conner has since admitted, thought using the safe harbor deadline as an “excuse” to stop the actual vote count was better than Al Gore winning and George W Bush losing.
The reason this is so important over 20 years latter is that getting away with it has only emboldened anti-democracy forces, including a majority of the Supreme Court, to go farther to subvert democracy.
Which is what this is all about.
From the article:
“An odd feature of this is it’s not clear to whose benefit the chaos will redound.” The answer is fascists.
Creating distrust in democracy and chaos in the vote counting, which is what is happening, rebounds to the benefit of those who oppose democracy and otherwise lose the popular vote but are determined to gain power anyway.
Democrats failed to understand that by accepting the 2000 Supreme Court decision to stop the votes from being counted and anointing Bush the winner would only embolden further anti-democracy forces if not from the Supreme Court from those who only believe elections are fair when they win, or as I call them fascists.
Whatever your view of the Supreme Court, if you think like me and that they will, like it did in 2000 do whatever it can get away with to help Republicans or think they are just applying their view of the constitution, the Court through Citizens United, gutting the voting rights act, the Heller decision allowing for crazies to walk around with loaded AR 15s, to propagation of the “independent state legislature theory”, to a host of other rulings has significantly strengthened the anti-democracy forces since its own very anti-democracy 2000 ruling making Bush president over the will of the people.
