Please scroll down for commentary on the Georgia Senate runoff races.
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By The Editors
After 2 pm the American Capitol was invaded. Their objective was to subvert a Constitutionally defined act of the United States of America.
Sounds like treason. Not like doing their Constitutionally protected “peaceful protest.”
Let’s be clear.
These are supporters of Donald J. Trump, the duly elected 45th president of the United States.
Trump had made a speech to his supporters. He said, in part, "And after this, we're going to walk down there, and I'll be there with you, we're going to walk down ... to the Capitol and we are going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. And we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong."
Let’s call it what it is: An incitement to riot.
And riot they did. And at this moment, riot they continue.
“This is our House! This is our House!”
“U.S.A!”
“U.S.A!”
This is America?
Many Republicans, who had ginned up the protest, are now crying crocodile tears about how this is “unacceptable.”
Many of his top supporters have been asking Trump to speak out, to tell the people to stop. To leave the Capitol. He can’t be reached.
How many of these can be surprised?
He is the President of the United States. Does he look at the screens of his TV sets in the Oval Office with a smug, self-satisfied smile and see how some of the physical jewels of the Republic being stormed, and think he’s not leaving?
“I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
On Sunday we heard Trump trying to have the Secretary of State of Georgia “find” a sufficient number of votes so that he could win the state. By one.
Is that lawful? Sounds like election tampering, which is illegal Federally and in the state of Georgia.
That is grounds for impeachment. And presumably an incitement to riot is, as well.
But for too long there have been people saying that things must be done carefully, ever so carefully, lest the Base be upset.
There’s the Base invading the Capitol.
How’s that working out?
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Please scroll down for commentary on the Georgia Senate runoff races.
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By Michelle Naranjo
Even as ballots were being counted in the first frenzied moments after polls closed for the Georgia senatorial run-offs, West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin was brought up as a potential obstacle to a new Democratic Senate majority.
Victory in Georgia for Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff was never a sure bet. Results for Warnock came in so fast, it was almost disconcerting to learn of his victory so quickly since we have had such a drawn-out presidential election. Violent supporters of President Trump overshadowed the mid-afternoon moment of triumph for Ossoff.
But they both won.
It has been two months since the repeatedly contested presidential election. As the final ballots in Georgia are still being counted, the U.S. Senate and Congress were to debate electoral college certification. Protestors stormed the steps of the Capitol; many have forced entry.
What is clear today is that Manchin is hardly the stumbling block our Republic has before it.
Senator Joe Manchin may be from a deeply red state and has a voting record that tips towards being a Trump supporter, but just barely.
He is a labor supporter, gaining the support of unions and those who support workers’ rights.
The actual foes are the arrogant members of both the House and Senate who demanded that the presidential election be questioned, elected officials who allowed and encouraged conspiracy theories and voter suppression. These are the same people who allowed Brian Kemp to cheat in the Georgia gubernatorial election two years ago.
After this fateful series of elections, failed court cases, seditious behavior from seated supporters of Trump in the House and Senate, the impressive diversity of Democratic representatives is the path forward.
Manchin won’t work against fellow Democrats if he gets some of what he wants. That can only be beneficial to his colleagues, who also want to raise worker’s rights. He may be a conservative Democrat, but he has also managed to hold on to his seat in West Virginia: quite the feat. What Warnock and Ossoff bring to the table is not a threat to him and might even enable him to accomplish more.
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By Todd Lassa
Democrat Joe Manchin III of West Virginia was trending on Twitter late Tuesday night as the most important Senator, even before urban precinct ballot counts in Georgia’s Senate runoff elections had begun to flip the fortunes of Democratic challengers Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff as cable news networks eagerly awaited results after polls closed. Warnock, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, and Ossoff decisively beat two Republican incumbents, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
Manchin is a Democrat who has served deep red West Virginia in the Senate for 10 years and now has the potential to become to his party what Senator Mitt Romney, R-Utah, has been to the GOP, although more so. Sitting in the late centrist-Democrat Robert C. Byrd’s seat, Manchin becomes a true swing vote, likely to defeat along with 50 Republican Senate bills that come from the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren wing of the Senate as well as those that come up from “The Squad” wing of the House.
The Democrats’ victories push their party to a 50-50 Senate count, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris serving as the tie-breaker on votes to give the party an effective majority over Republicans. Lame duck President Trump and GOP leaders tried to paint Democratic control of the House, Senate, and White House as the road to socialist damnation. But Georgia Democrats, led by likely 2022 Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams and aided by such groups as Black Votes Matter, turned out about 4.5 million voters total by Tuesday, many of them using mail-in ballots. Meanwhile, President Trump’s unfounded claims of voter fraud in each of the swing states he lost apparently stifled Republican turnout, and his attack specifically on Georgia’s preference for Biden almost certainly prompted many supporters to stay at home.
The Reverend Raphael Warnock says he will remain leader of the Atlanta church once pastored by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and becomes the first Black senator from Georgia, the 11th Black senator in the history of the nation and one of three in the 117th Congress, with Democrat Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Republican Tim Scott of South Carolina, as Kamala Harris moves from the Senate to the vice presidency.
Manchin’s power on Capitol Hill ultimately depends on where the GOP goes from here, what with Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., about to be demoted to minority leader and already distancing himself from the Trump administration while attempting to warn fellow Republican senators against challenging Electoral College votes for President-elect Biden Wednesday. So far, 12 Republican senators have indicated they plan to defy McConnell and challenge the results from their respective states, including lame-duck Senator Loeffler of Georgia.
By Todd Lassa Democrat Joe Manchin III of West Virginia was trending on Twitter late Tuesday night as […]
By Bryan Williams
In thinking about this column, I tried to find a theme. The one that kept coming to my mind was “Let the chips fall where they may.” Ever since it became clear in early November 2020 that President Trump had lost the election, he and many Republicans have gone on a journey of lawsuits and arm-twisting with a goal of making those chips fall where they wanted them to.
Trump and the loyal Republicans in Washington spent the last two months losing the Georgia Senate runoff. What did they expect when they blurted out, “Don’t vote because the system is rigged, but please vote to defeat these socialist Democrats?” Huh?
I voted for Trump in November and I didn’t hold my nose. He won me over because I was able to separate Twitter Trump from the Trump who presides. I generally agreed with his policies. He cut taxes. He was prudent with the use of the military. He confronted China and engaged North Korea’s Kim Jong-un (with mixed results, but hey, he did more than most other presidents). Trump’s administration got us out of the Paris Climate Accord and Iran Nuclear Deal, which I think were both stinkers. He also had much success in advancing peace in the Middle East.
Then he lost in November and Twitter Trump took over and the wheels really fell off. Georgia voters noticed, and to their credit, organizers there were able to turn out the Democratic vote in volume not seen in decades.
It wasn’t all Trump’s fault. Incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue were weak candidates in my opinion. Loeffler is a rich white woman who was appointed and never chosen by Georgia voters, to begin with. Perdue refused to debate Ossoff, which was a huge mistake. Also, my theory that the younger or more vigorous candidate usually wins held true in the case of Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff.
So now we have government run by the Democrats. It wasn’t inevitable, but Trump and his loyal Republicans made it inevitable with their odd behavior of the past two months. Will the Dems muck it up with their newfound power? As the outgoing President said so often, “We’ll see.”
By Bryan Williams In thinking about this column, I tried to find a theme. The one that kept […]
By Nic Woods
President Donald Trump signed late Sunday evening the omnibus funding package, including $900 billion in coronavirus relief that Congress passed last week after denouncing the $600 relief checks to taxpayers as “disgraceful.”
The amount – $600 – is paltry, but so is the $2,000 Trump and Democrats in the House of Representatives sought, but Congressional Republicans blocked.
The $2,000 may have helped six months ago, but it is all too little now for the households that need it most.
The relief the bill claims to offer does not make up for lost wages from closed businesses and, for those facing eviction, $2,000 is only a drop in a bucket that has grown larger for months. For small businesses that have really taken a hit (many of which were never able to receive funds in the first round “stimulus” bill) any relief may come too late to delay the inevitable.
Many iconic places across the nation have already closed for good.
While an abomination, but also an opportunity for discourse that should happen post-COVID, along with health care, separating life security from job security is a conversation long overdue. If anything, the pandemic has shown what our country looks like when unfettered capitalism fails us all.
Because the “invisible hand of the market” does not work if supply and demand are as out of whack as they have been since March. As Harvard Business School economist Michael Luca told The New York Times back in October, “if a market is not safe, people won’t participate in it.”
So COVID-19 has only exacerbated a process that has been occurring for much of the past 50 years. Secure, well-paying jobs with benefits were going the way of the dodo bird prior to 2020. Now service jobs – which have become a pillar of our economy, but also tend to require close contact – are in deep trouble. Retail and hospitality will continue to suffer unless they can guarantee worker and customer safety, and even large companies that did well during the outbreak are shedding jobs.
Even the gig economy, which so many have relied on to make ends meet until jobs open up, has become oversaturated, with more shoppers, personal assistants, delivery persons and drivers than individuals or companies that need them.
But one thing is for sure. People who are not used to living in full, constant survival mode are going to be increasingly disgruntled having to scrounge for food, shelter, and clothing while others are making out like bandits. And it is something we must start talking about, because it is not just affecting the working class anymore. In a global pandemic, everyone is affected.
And money protects no one when only some have it and others don’t. So, to those who fear socialism? What if a little is necessary to save capitalism from itself and keep the destitute from aiming their pitchforks at your door?
Nic Woods dedicates this column to the memory of anthropologist, activist, and author David Graeber, who died Sept. 2. Graeber’s work laid the groundwork that inspired Woods to write the column.
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By Todd Lassa
President Trump signed the $900-billion COVID-19 emergency relief Sunday night while enjoying an extended Christmas weekend at Mar-a-Lago. He had left Washington last week while erstwhile Senate Republican allies fumed because he wanted $2,000 checks to taxpayers, calling the $600 checks in the bill, and items he considers excessive “a disgrace.”
The president’s signing of the bill also averts a federal government shutdown Monday night, with $1.4-trillion to fund the government through fall of 2021. In addition, the bill provides eviction protection for millions of people, who would have otherwise faced potential homelessness.
“I will sign the omnibus and COVID package with a strong message that wasteful items need to be removed,” Trump said, according to Politico. He said he planned to send back to Congress a “redlined” version with items to be removed from the bill, which has no effect on its passage.
Last week Trump vetoed a $740.5-billion defense spending bill for the coming fiscal year, because it contained a provision to rename military bases named for Confederate leaders, and online liability protections. Like the COVID relief bill, the defense spending legislation was passed by veto-proof Senate majorities. The Senate is scheduled to return to the Capitol Tuesday.
For one Coronapocalipse weekend, Trump and Pelosi appeared to be on the same political page, as Pelosi was eager to take up the president’s demand for bigger relief checks, even after months of negotiations between her and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin landed on the $600 figure. The House will vote on a separate bill Monday that would increase the payments to $2,000.
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By Stephen Macaulay
Although Christmas 2020 is behind us, the current situation vis-à-vis the COVID-relief bill brings Dickens’ classic holiday horror story to mind. While most of us remember that there are the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, there is also the ghost of Ebenezer Scrooge’s former partner, Jacob Marley. Marley is condemned to wander the earth wearing heavy chains because of his counting house-based greed and ill-will.
Donald Trump claimed that he didn’t want to sign the bill that was many months in the making and passed by both houses of Congress because, he belatedly claimed, the $600 that will go to adults with an adjusted gross annual income, in 2019, of up to $75,000 is too paltry. He wanted, as the Democrats had been working toward before they thought the best was the enemy of the good and negotiated it down, $2,000.
One wonders whether Saturday night during still another vacation at Mar-a-Lago he’d been visited by Jacob Marley. Or whether he wanted his Sharpie signature to be on something more robust. Bigly.
Without going all Scrooge, there is something that isn’t discussed a whole lot in light of the prevailing pandemic situation: the national debt.
If you want to see something that is both inexplicable and scary, go to usdebtclock.org and watch the number roll up at a rate that is probably best viewed on a gaming machine because it has a video card better capable of handling this rate of change.
As I am writing this the U.S. national debt is $27.5-trillion. By the time you read this, it may be higher.
So the question is, what’s a few trillion dollars more?
The first CARES Act was passed March 27, 2020. That was long before, arguably, the pandemic really hit the fan.
Let’s not just put Trump in the corner for his belated action on the demand for the increase in family funding. Congress is more than derelict in its response to the pandemic.
But here’s the thing. If $600 is too little, is $2,000 enough? Would $4,000 be better? How about more?
What is perhaps not recalled is that the CARES Act provided $1,200 per adult whose income was less than $99,000 and $500 per child under 17, or up to $3,400 for a family of four.
As Nic Woods points out, the economy is not going to get back into full swing unless people feel safe in the market. People — well, this is perhaps too broad a brush, because the images of the people filling airports during the holiday indicates that there are plenty who just don’t care or believe the danger — will not feel safe-ish until the pandemic is under control.
Citizens who are following the rules — wearing a mask, social distancing, washing hands frequently — with a Trump-signed check for $2,000 aren’t likely to spend that money at their local small business as they might have, say, last February, because they know what the consequences can be. So they order from Amazon. Which is good for Jeff Bezos, but how about the local economies?
What is really needed is Operation Warp Speed Squared in terms of getting the vaccines into arms so that people can truly be safe and then more likely to go out in the world in a more normal way, as well as testing that doesn’t require idling in a car for a few hours.
Of course, there is nothing normal about current conditions.
Let’s make sure that those who have been blindsided by the pandemic get help, whether they are individuals or owners of a family bakery. Let’s make sure that the first responders as well as those who are on the front lines, from medical personnel to teachers to the people who are working in grocery stores, are given additional support: that woman who is ringing a register at Kroger hour after hour sure as hell didn’t sign up for a job that puts her life at risk. That young guy who is emptying bed pans and pushing people in wheel chairs probably didn’t imagine that his main concern is keeping his parents safe when he gets home from work.
But let’s make sure we are providing money to create the conditions that will make the market safe so the economy can get back on its feet. Vaccinations. Testing. Rinse. Repeat.
That debt clock is still racking up numbers. At some point we’re going to have to pay it down. But unless the virus is controlled, there will be continued strains on people: Do you go to work if your kid is sick? On the health care system: Do we really expect all of those hospital employees to continue to work as hard as they have for the past many months? And there will be continued strains on the economy as a whole.
It isn’t necessarily about spending more. It is about spending better. There is a real cost to all of this. We can’t ignore it.
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By Chase Wheaton
A few weeks ago, President Obama made headlines and bolstered Republicans’ political arsenal when he referred to “Defund the police” as a “snappy slogan” during a Snapchat interview. While this doesn’t come as a major surprise given Obama’s relatively moderate stance regarding police and criminal justice reform, it serves as a massive disappointment to the Progressive wing of the Democratic party, and more importantly, to the communities that have been ravaged by police violence for many years, as the fight for meaningful criminal justice reform carries on. Not only do these comments by President Obama do irreparable damage to the movement for defunding the police, but they also show how much establishment politicians are disconnected from the community members whom they’re elected to serve and represent.
With all due respect to President Obama, “Defund the police” is not a “snappy slogan”. It is a policy proposal. It is a demand for structural and systemic change. It is a cry for help. The phrase, “Defund the police” arose during the George Floyd protests this summer from those most disproportionately affected by police violence – the Black community and other people of color – and during a state of crisis.
The world had just witnessed the video-recorded murder of a nonviolent Black man by a white police officer, a tragic reality that the Black community was unfortunately already too familiar with. From this devastation came months and months of protests against police violence, marches for the Black Lives Matter movement, and demands for criminal justice and police reform. These demands, which included “Defund the police”, were created by everyday community members and organizers in the face of constantly overlooked police violence – not by PR companies and career politicians who operate in the realm of campaigns and public perception. In fact, I’d argue that it is the job of President Obama and other politicians to do the work of grappling with public perception and of worrying about how palatable a phrase may be to the general public, not those who are making these cries for help. After all, as Stephen Macaulay wrote in the center column, “When someone [in this case, an armed police officer] is pointing a gun at you [in this case, someone from the Black community], you’re not worried about nuanced phrasing”, you’re worried about doing anything you can “to keep [yourself] from being permanently perforated”.
The purpose of protesting is to disrupt the culture of our society, challenge the status quo, and make people uncomfortable. As such, the movement to defund police has succeeded. The phrase “Defund the police” has received unparalleled attention from the mainstream media, has led to countless conversations about police violence and criminal justice reform in households across the country, and has already led to several significant changes in funding for police departments around the country. That’s a lot more than can be said of the criminal justice reform (or lack thereof) that was achieved during President Obama’s administration. Ultimately, President Obama’s remarks delegitimize and invalidate these movements, and I hope that he and other politicians remember that their role is to help facilitate and create meaningful and positive change for the most marginalized members of our society, not to stand in the way of progress and act as the gatekeeper to a more just and equitable world.
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First Person Essay by Stephen Macaulay
Several years ago there was a massive ice storm in Cincinnati. I was with a colleague and we were going into a restaurant. As we walked across the parking lot my feet slipped out from under me and the next thing I knew I was flat on my back in massive pain, and so 911 was called.
And at some point—of course it seemed far too long to me, as I was prostrate on the ice-covered asphalt—a full-size fire truck showed up. Yes, one of those vehicles with ladders on the side.
The fire crew came out, surrounded me, and fairly quickly concluded that there wasn’t much they could do for me.
What eventually happened was that a good Samaritan said that he could take me to the hospital. So the fire crew lifted me up and put me in the back seat of a Honda Accord. And I was taken to the hospital.
The situation at the time was that there had been such a great number of emergency calls throughout Cincinnati that what was available had to be sent.
So here’s the thing: Would anyone take a look at that situation and say, “Defund the fire department!” or “Fund EMS!”? In my case, more EMS people and gear would have been appropriate. If the restaurant had been on fire, it would have been the former.
As the old British legal saw has it, “horses for courses.”
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In early December Barrack Obama was interviewed on Snapchat and said, “If you believe, as I do, that we should be able to reform the criminal justice system so that it's not biased and treats everybody fairly, I guess you can use a snappy slogan like 'Defund the police,' but, you know, you lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you're actually going to get the changes you want done.”
Which caused a number of audible and visible members of the Democratic Party to be completely agitated by what is clearly a pragmatic remark, politically, socially and, dare I say, realistically.
If someone is robbing your restaurant, you surely hope that cops are coming sooner rather than later. When someone is pointing a gun at you, you’re not worried about nuanced phrasing if it means that there isn’t going to be a police officer there to keep you from being permanently perforated.
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Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It is one of those things that you can readily imagine being the purview of professors at Ivy League schools, where they debate how many liberals can dance on the head of a pin.
You would imagine that Democrats would be good at it.
But when it comes to messaging, Trump has, yes, trumped them.
Think of the two slogans that resonated in the election that Trump won, not the one he lost in a landslide.
- “Build the Wall!”
- “Lock Her Up!”
Although the Wall still remains to be built and Hillary Clinton is free without bond, those chants still echo.
Why? Because they are positive, proactive statements.
They are commands to do something. “Performative acts,” in the words of linguists.
“Defund the police”?
As “snappy” as that might be, it simply doesn’t do the job because it is saying something that people shouldn’t do. If you want to get people on your side, you get them to buy into what they should be doing.
Proof? Well, the 10 Commandments are chock full of “Thou shalt nots.” How’s that working out?
Please address comments to editors@thehustings.news
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By Andrew Boyd
President-elect Biden (there, I said it) was speaking recently to a group of Black Lives Matter activists and mistakenly, I imagine, said the quiet part out loud, in essence imploring the group to drop the “Defund the police” sloganeering, just until after the Georgia Senate runoffs, mind you. Joe isn’t great on the nuance. He’s also the guy who keeps saying stupid crap like police should just shoot perpetrators in the legs.
Barack Obama, by contrast, is an exceptionally talented messenger, and respected as such, I believe. The party would be wise to listen, but its radical left is young, avaricious and impatient for change, and when the old guard says “shhh,” well, they're likely to do what young whippersnappers do, which is to double down. Where things go from here is anyone’s guess.
The AOC wing (God save us all) has made it plain that when they say defund the police, that’s precisely what they mean. Credit for the honesty on at least this one point, I suppose. Indeed, the prevailing rhetorical winds of the D part blow straight from the mouths of the social justice squad, and it’s going to be an incredibly hard gale against which to tack, particularly for the likes of Joe, who is less the accomplished sailor than the well-oiled old weathervane. Also, he’s got Kamala with a strainer full of Chai Cyanide Evening Brew hanging from a chain about her neck, just waiting to strike. Poor old goat.
Oh, and for the record, while it might surprise some, I too believe that we need police reform, though my prescription runs afoul of the ‘defund’ bit. I think what we really need is more policing, a hell of a lot more, including aggressive stop and frisk, and broken windows policies of the kind a somewhat saner Rudy Giuliani used to astonishing effect during his tenure as America’s mayor.
Moreover, I think police are overworked, underpaid and asked to do the hardest job there is this side of soldier or Biden’s food taster: to be in near-constant contact with the worst elements of our human nature, and still behave rationally and with infallible precision. Among the roughly 800,000 men and women in blue, there are undoubtedly more than a handful of really bad apples, and they should be sorted appropriately.
More training, education, rest, and emotional and psychological support is needed; and with that, unquestionably, an absolute maximum of transparency and full accountability within the bounds of the law.
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By Stephen Macaulay
“We’re going to win this election in a landslide.”
Yes, you know who said that. But you probably don’t know when he said it: Not before November 3. Not November 3. Not the following several days.
No, Donald Trump said that December 10, 2020, at a Hanukkah event at the White House.
A landslide.
If that doesn’t scare the hell out of all of the people who continue to carry his water, then there is something wrong with them. Doesn’t reason matter?
This absurdity really needs to stop.
This is dangerous. Dangerous to our democracy. Although House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in a letter to her Democratic peers that the 126 House Republicans who signed on to the Texas attorney general-led effort to have the Supreme Court reverse the results of the election—which the Court rejected--an action that is tantamount to “subverting the Constitution,” this isn’t something that just Democrats need to take to heart: Anyone who has an American flag flying from their porches need to understand that these efforts to undermine what has been part of the fabric of this country since 1789, when the first presidential election was completed (the election was held from December 15, 1788 to January 10, 1789: were those House Republicans around back then, one wonders how apoplectic they would have been about that) are unacceptable.
Meanwhile, Trump is purportedly working harder than ever on what I would call a Quixotic quest except that it would besmirch Cervantes.
But there are other things going on. For example, on December 10 unemployment numbers for the previous week came in: new claims of 853,000.
And as for the big picture, there were some 19-million unemployment claims (week ending November 21, the most recent figures).
What’s more, what’s worse, is that on December 10 the CDC Tweeted: “As of December 7, national forecasts predict that 12,600 to 23,400 new #COVID19 deaths will be reported during the week ending January 2. These forecasts predict 332,000 to 362,000 total COVID-19 deaths in the United States by January 2.”
So what is the current occupant of the White House doing? Is he talking about the economy? Is he laying out a plan to help reduce the massive unemployment that has been a consequence of COVID-19, the virus that was supposed to have “just disappear[ed]” months ago?
Is he providing the sort of spiritual leadership that has been the role of presidents, to provide solace for the loss of life? Know that on December 10, there were 290,000 Americans who were lost to COVID-19. By December 14, the count had topped 300,000.
And he treats himself like a victim.
There is a lot of talk about the 74-million people who voted for Trump. There is less discussion of the 290,000+ who have died and their families. What has he done, or is he doing, for them?
What seems to be forgotten in all this is that he is operating on our dime. He is working for us. If you were working and spent all of your time pissing and moaning about how you were being overlooked and underappreciated, you’d probably find yourself in the category of the aforementioned unemployed statistics.
You are paid to do your job. If you don’t do it, well, in the words of you know who: “You’re fired!”
He’s not doing his job. He might as well leave right now. Pence hasn’t exactly been overworked the last four years, unless one counts trying to come up with tortured excuses for his boss. And this would provide the opportunity to give Trump a presidential pardon.
Funny thing about all of the talk of pardons. According to "Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary," the definition of pardon is: “To use the executive power of a governor or president to forgive a person charged with a crime or convicted of a crime, thus preventing any prosecution and removing any remaining penalties or punishments.”
Seems like he’s not just doing his job, but perhaps there is more to it. Or maybe that’s less.
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By Todd Lassa
California’s 55 electors formally cast their votes for longtime U.S. senator and former Vice President Joe Biden Monday, putting him over the 271 he needed to become president, and on to a 306-232 victory over incumbent President Trump.
Now, finally Trump will end his challenges against the presidential election outcome, based on unfounded claims of ballot fraud primarily in Democratic-majority urban areas, right?
Not so fast. While electors met in 50 states plus the District of Columbia Monday, a joint session of Congress meets January 6 to count those votes, and hardcore Trump Republicans are still threatening to overturn Electoral College votes, NPR reports.
The latest of Trump’s more than 50 failed court cases came in Wisconsin Monday just one hour before the state’s 10 electors were escorted by police into a statehouse chamber to cast their votes for Biden. The state Supreme Court rejected the incumbent president’s bid challenging four types of ballots in Milwaukee and Dane counties after the first recount there added about 130 votes to Biden’s 0.6% margin.
Monday’s Wisconsin Supreme Court decision was close; 4-3, with one conservative justice joining the court’s three liberals.
Michigan’s presidential electors met in the Lansing statehouse at 2 p.m. Eastern time Monday, in chambers closed because of safety precautions. Prior to the vote, Michigan Republican leaders stripped state Rep. Gary Eisen, R-St. Clair Township, of his committee assignments after he made comments on a local radio station that hinted he was part of a group that planned to undermine or overturn Biden’s 16 Electoral College votes from the state, the Detroit Free Press reports.
And this all comes after the U.S. Supreme Court late last Friday rejected Texas’ Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton’s suit demanding that 20 million ballots from Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin be thrown out. The court’s unsigned ruling prompted sometimes violent demonstrations in several U.S. cities Saturday, including Washington, D.C., where attendees included former national security advisor Michael Flynn, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and members of the right-wing Proud Boys, who have ties to white nationalism.
A group of 126 Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives backed Paxton’s suit to reverse the vote of the four “swing” states Biden won November 3, which left 74 House Republicans who declined to back President Trump’s effort. Or, 73 if you count out retiring Rep. Paul Mitchell, R-Mich., who announced Monday he would leave his party.
Please address comments to editors@thehustings.news
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By Bryan Williams
I have always found the selective amnesia of people a curious thing. My wife will be the first to tell you I have selective amnesia (though I swear I don't recall she said this or that!), but I do remember big things. My high school band teacher was one of my favorites. He was fond of saying, “A short pencil is better than a long memory." The news is not written in pencil, but it is written online.
I still find it curious that Nancy Pelosi is outraged by the GOP signing on to the Texas Attorney General's (very creative) suit as subverting the Constitution. I hate to break it to the Speaker, but the whole purpose of sending lawsuits to the Supreme Court is to determine if they stand constitutional muster. Everyone has a right to her or his day in court no matter how specious or far-fetched the lawsuit may be. You gotta give Texas AG Paxton some points for creativity though. He had a point, whether or not voting in each state and the District of Columbia was conducted November 3 in a clean, legal manner. The Supreme Court said, "Nice try, but nope." What would have subverted the Constitution is not giving Paxton and 126 GOP members of Congress their day in court.
And here comes the "short pencil" part: Remember about four years ago when people within Barack Obama's government were spying on Trump and his incoming team using dubious legal means? Was that not a subversion of the Constitution? What about all the executive orders President Obama signed? Is that not a subversion of the Constitution, and even of the very power Pelosi wields in the House?
I don’t think the most die-hard liberal, or Joe Biden supporter would assume there could be absolutely no election fraud in 2020, considering the unprecedented number of mail-in ballots in such an atypical year. Rules for signature verification on ballots varies widely from county to county, and the United States has over 3,000 counties.
Do I wish Mr. Paxton had tried a different tactic? Yes. I’m not a lawyer, but I think he should have asked the Supremes to rule on signature verification consistency, and how the lack of such consistency affected his state’s voters’ rights.
Was he trying to subvert the Constitution? I don't think he believes he was, nor do I think the GOP House members who signed on believe they were. I wish people would be more careful with their language. Pelosi's subversion comment was hyperbole. But what else would we expect in a year like this? Keep those pencils sharp, and short.
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