Tag: America's mayor

Cracked Lens of the Shining Beacon

By Stephen Macaulay

At 3:44 am, January 7, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, President of the Senate, took the gavel in hand and closed the joint session of Congress that certified the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the President and Vice President of the United States.

Was anyone surprised at the outcome?

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“Schoolhouse Rock” Revisited

The process is one that most of us probably missed during “Schoolhouse Rock”: the procedure for certifying the presidential election. The Electoral College was established under Article II and Amendment 12 of the U.S. Constitution. States choose electors based on the results of the general election. 

The electors create what are known as Certificates of Vote, which are sent to Congress, which then sits in joint session to certify the election.

There is a second place they are sent: The Office of the Federal Register (OFR), which is under the National Archives and Records Administration.

The OFR puts these electoral documents on public display for a year. Then they go to the Archives of the United States.

You might wonder why there is this tutorial.

Several reasons.

To point out to some people who were involved in Wednesday’s national embarrassment that there is a U.S. Constitution. That there is a careful process of certification. That this entire procedure is part and parcel of what has made the United States of America a special place for more than two centuries.

Maybe they skipped civics.

And to let some of these people know where they can spend their time now it is established that the man from whom they took their marching orders is no longer in office: Gazing at the documents that show that the people of the United States of America and their designated electors have made Joe Biden and Kamala Harris the President and Vice President, respectively.

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That was written Wednesday before an angry mob, goaded on by the angry man who lost the election, attacked the United States of America. Extreme? Not if you see the photo of the law enforcement officials, guns in hand, behind the barricaded doors of the House of Representatives. 

While I had thought about deleting that explanation, when Mike Lee, Republican Senator from Utah, took to the floor of the Senate last evening to make his remarks regarding the curious claims of Ted Cruz, Republican Senator from Texas, that there needed to be a commission that would run for 10 days looking into the security of the election, he cited Article II, Section 12.

In Lee’s words: “Our job is to open and then count. Open and then count. That’s it. That’s all there is.”

Lee had proffered a booklet containing the Constitution when he made those remarks. I wonder if there are any copies at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

***

The most-telling admission of the lack of seriousness of the results to overturn the election (let’s call it what it was) came from Kelly Loeffler, Republican Senator from Georgia, who had signed on with the Hawley/Cruz Putsch Planners. Realize that Loeffler, that very day, had been handed a pink slip by the voters of Georgia. Arguably, she would have nothing to lose politically were she to maintain her allegiance to something — or more accurately, someone -- other than the flag.

But Loeffler, who would undoubtedly be one of the many who’d have angry tweets written about her were it not that Donald Trump’s Twitter account had been given a time-out, appeared shaken to realize that words have consequences, and when those words are not true, when they are about fanciful conspiracies, then there can be things like angry mobs attacking the U.S. Capitol.

She saw the consequences. She withdrew her support of the efforts to, as she had it on the homepage of her website (probably to be taken down by now), “give President Trump and the American people the fair hearing they deserve and support the objection to the Electoral College certification process.”

She knew there was nothing there. And she probably knew that had the Senators not been escorted out of the chamber earlier in the day by armed police, the mob wouldn’t be discerning: she would have been in the same danger as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. That would have been real.

***

A word about the rule of law.

Rudolph Giuliani is the former associate attorney general in the Reagan administration. He was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he prosecuted the likes of Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken for financial fraud, organized crime figures, and other people who broke the law. He was lauded for his forthright efforts to uphold the rule of law. After the horrible events that occurred on September 11, 2001, Giuliani, then mayor of New York City, became “America’s mayor,” as he stood up to the forces that were attacking the core values of the United States.

Shortly before the Capitol was stormed, Giuliani, now Donald Trump’s personal attorney, told the crowd at the “Save America Rally,” “Let’s have trial by combat.”

The personal attorney of the President of the United States.

“Let’s have trial by combat.”

That’s not in the Constitution, either.

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The Turbulent Winds of Joe’s Presidency Have Just Begun to Blow

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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