Roberts Strategy To Be Revealed Tomorrow?

For the last several months--since the abdication of the Roberts SCOTUS from involvement in Election 2020--we've been speculating about a possible 'Roberts strategy' for election law. The basic idea is that, based on recent election law rulings, CJ Roberts has devised a federalist strategy for extricating the SCOTUS from the swamp of election lawsuits--to the extent possible--by returning primary responsibility for elections to the states. Which is precisely where the Constitution places the exclusive responsibility. What a concept! That, of course, would run counter to the federalization of all elections that has been trending--at the instigation of the Left--for several decades.

The rubber may hit the road on Monday, when Jonathan Turley expects a ruling in the Arizona election law case that came to the SCOTUS from the Ninth Circuit. This term--since the election in any event--the SCOTUS seems to have adopted a policy of issuing quite narrow--perhaps excessively narrow--rulings, but on largely unanimous grounds. But it's difficult to see the Court disposing of the AZ case on narrow procedural grounds if Roberts truly has a strategy in mind. The AZ case seeks to legitimize the Left's favorite electoral tactics of ballot harvesting and so forth which the AZ law bans. If the Roberts court returns responsibility to the states there should be a scramble to rewrite elections laws--with the legislatures being held accountable to the voters.

In this context of a pending decision in the AZ case, DoJ took the step of initiating a lawsuit challenging Georgia's new law. Does the Zhou regime know something? Or, in my opinion, is this a last ditch effort to influence the SCOTUS decision in the AZ case? Or is it possibly an attempt to steal some of the thunder from a decision that Dems fear, for consumption of their base? 

Jonathan Turley, law prof at Geo Washington U., has weighed in at Fox News with some interesting thoughts on the matter.

Briefly Noted: Fascinating Referendum Results In Switzerland

I don't think this was expected:

A climate change referendum in Switzerland just went down in flames led by 18-34 year old voters

Read the full article for more commentary on the reality of government fronted climate change policies. Here's what happened with the vote. The question is--can this translate to other countries as well? When faced with the reality of Leftist policies--not just in climate matters--will young people wake up to the threat to their future?

Swiss Reject Climate Change

Eurointelligence reports Swiss Reject Climate Change

After Switzerland dropped its negotiations with the EU, the country has now rejected a climate-protection law in a referendum. Concretely, they rejected all three parts of the law in separate votes: on CO2, on pesticides, and on drinking water.

We agree with the Swiss journalist Mathieu von Rohr that this failure is not merely important in its own right, but symptomatic for the difficulties facing Green politics in general. It is one thing for people to pretend they support the Green party, especially when it is cool to do so. It is quite another to make actual sacrifices as the Swiss were asked to do.

But what is particularly interesting about this referendum is that the strongest opposition came from young people. 60-70% of the 18-34 year old voted No in the three categories.

Each country is different, but the big yet unanswered question is whether people elsewhere would agree to make personal sacrifices for the greater good. The Swiss referendum tells us we should not take this for granted. The German elections will be the next big test.

Huge Shock

The referendum Failed 51-49. And it took a crushing rejection by Zoomers and millennials to do it. 

In other words, but for young people getting out to vote 'No' three times, this referendum would have passed. What could this portend for Election 2020? I can't say, obviously. As Eurointelligence says, "each country is different." Will "people elsewhere ... agree to make personal sacrifices for the greater good?"

Speaking of personal sacrifices, in Chicago over the weekend some people made personal sacrifices--including the ultimate sacrifice--for the greater good of a Demo sponsored "mostly peaceful" holiday: 8 Murdered, 49 Wounded in America’s Largest Open-Air Range. Believe it or not--and I wouldn't joke you about this--those numbers represented major progress from 2020, when Chicago went 17-96.

UPDATED: Election Fraud Investigations Continue

We're all looking forward to see the results of the audit from Arizona soon, but already more and more irregularities in the handling procedures and in the access authorities are being revealed. Dem and, yes, GOPe stonewalling continues at a high legal level--local authorities are defying state senate subpoenas, even though state legislatures--under the US Constitution and most state laws--are in charge of elections. Some of these issues are finding their way to the SCOTUS. There's plenty of time for these matters to be resolved--or, if not resolved, then aired--before Election 2022.

As I've said previously, I simply don't have time to cover all the ins and outs of these investigations. As a result I'm waiting for more details on a broader scale than are currently available. We know that there are ongoing investigations with regard to GA, MI, and WI. I'm not sure what the situation is with regard to PA, but I believe there is action there, too.

I notice that my last reference to these matters at any length was all the way back at the beginning of February: BRIEFLY NOTED: Matt Braynard Is Still On The Case. In that post I noted Braynard's continuing outstanding efforts to document and expose widespread fraud. At that time I quoted Braynard from an appearance he made on Steve Bannon's show--and I don't believe anything has happened to change his assessment:

What I’m finding and continuing to find, because we’re actually still doing research, and we’re looking forward to presenting it more aggressively without the constraints of the lawsuits we were entangled with initially, is that among those three states, the number of illegal ballots surpassed the margin of victory. Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona, without those three, Joe Biden isn’t president – and I think we can prove that fairly conclusively.

Last night and this morning TGP had several posts which illustrate what Braynard was talking about as recently as two months ago (he's been on the case for far longer). Braynard, in his conversation with Bannon, focused strongly on Wisconsin, and since then there have been continuing revelations of collusion between local Dem elected officials and national Dem operatives--often circumventing local election officials. The first TGP report delves into more of that. It's now being documented that the scope of these operations was quite widespread:

UPDATED: Is This One Way?

Fire, meet gasoline:

Obama urges Americans to ‘confront historical inequities,’ after fatal Daunte Wright police shooting | Just The News https://t.co/5FNhJCUgMT

— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) April 13, 2021

It's not totally clear to me how "historical inequities" enter into a police officer confusing their taser gun with their service handgun. Nevertheless, we now learn that the mayor of Brooklyn Center has found one way to immediately address "historical inequities"--or something like that:

Black City Manager Fired For Saying Officer Who Shot Daunte Wright Deserves ‘Due Process’

Effective immediately our city manager has been relieved of his duties, and the deputy city manager will be assuming his duties moving forward. I will continue to work my hardest to ensure good leadership at all levels of our city government.

— Mayor Mike Elliott (@mayor_elliott) April 12, 2021

Now, here's a thought. Is there a difference between an "historical" and an "historic" inequity--or can one incident be both? If the two are different, should they be treated differently--and if so why? Here's what I'm getting at.

Briefly Noted: Legal News--And Russia

I had occasion to point out yesterday (An Independent Judiciary?) that President Trump's (and Mitch McConnell's) strategy of concentrating on confirming appellate level federal judges is paying dividends. Not all is smooth sailing, of course. The 9th Circuit can still be a problem (as recently in a 2A case), but it's still far better than when Trump took office. A couple of cases on this relatively slow news day (so far) illustrate the impact Trump's appellate judges are having.

Since I mentioned the 2A just now, a case from New Jersey is a good place to start. Defense Distributed is a TX company that distributes various 3d print files for firearms and firearm accessories. New Jersey's Attorney General, Gurbir Grewal, sent Defense Distributed letters in TX attempting to restrain Defense Distributed from doing its business in NJ and threatening to prosecute Defense Distributed. The federal district court in TX agreed with Grewal that those letters were insufficient to provide the TX court with jurisdiction in the case. However, the Fifth Circuit disagreed. The SCOTUS has now--by declining Grewal's petition for certiorari--agreed with the Fifth Circuit.

The practical effect of this jurisdictional decision is that NJ will now have to justify its conduct to an unsympathetic federal court in TX. The Truth About Guns points out that the Fifth Circuit

has already made it clear that it believes that governmental efforts to restrict Defense Distributed’s distribution of 3D files have very serious if not fatal First Amendment implications.

This complicates anti-gun matters for crusading officials in anti-2A states. The SCOTUS undoubtedly knew this.

There's more good news from the 6th Circuit (which includes Ohio). You can read a longer account here:

Interesting: Semi-Serious Social Science Study On January 6 Event

Victoria Taft wrote this up for PJ Media, but I got it through Zerohedge:

Study Shows Very Few Capitol Hill Rioters Were QAnon Red-Staters With Ties To 'Right-Wing' Groups

The study comes from the prestigious University of Chicago, and includes some interesting information about the people who participated in as well as those who were arrested at the January 6 Event. For example, the researchers were rather impressed with the level of intellectual sophistication of those involved. They also had to come up with a whole new category for people participating in protests: Business Owners! Go figure, eh? At a rally of conservatives we find ... business owners!

Read it all, but here are some highlights. The researchers labored from the usual stereotypical perspectives and narratives. What's interesting is that they found themselves struggling to come to grips with a reality that didn't fit their usual categories and stereotypes:

UPDATED: The REAL Story

I avoid stories that I can't possibly keep up with, but this is one you've all read about and which is worth pointing to. I'm talking about the Fake News--or maybe I should just come out and say Hoax Journalism--about Trump's supposed "obstruction" in his phone call to the GA Secretary of State's lead investigator. The WaPo, which ran with the story has, as you know, tried to slip a retraction past John Q. Public after their fraud was exposed by the WSJ--I won't be resubscribing to the WSJ, but a hat tip to them nevertheless.

Now enterprising journalists are taking a closer look to see what this means. Obviously, the fact that the Dems actually referred to this hoax at their Hoax Impeachment 2.0 is a rather big part of the story--what the hell kind of "impeachment" is it that goes with unverified newspaper articles attributed to anonymous sources? But that may be only part of the bigger picture.

Here's a tweet by the Washington Examiner's Beckett Adams that points toward that bigger picture:

you all are missing the real story re: WaPo's correction of its Trump/Ga. investigations chief "scoop."

the real scandal is that a bunch of newsrooms claimed at the time they “confirmed” the details of the "scoop" with their own anon sourcing.https://t.co/4Xqxt3mcHk

— tsar becket adams (@BecketAdams) March 15, 2021

The link in the tweet, of course, is to Adams' full article on this story. Here's what he's referring, citing chapter and verse of the "news" organizations that were in on the hoax:

A New Concept: Sovereign Crime

Yesterday I offered a few Tentative Signs Of Hope? Today, a splash of cold water. Tentative signs of hope isn't the same as rampant optimism. I do try to offer tempered optimism--remember disgraced former AG Bill Barr, Justice Amy, etc.?--but I don't turn away from reality.

Today, starting soon, I'll be taking a bit of a mental health break--at least for the morning. Mental, not physical, health--the wrist/hand is much better, thanks to the brace and keyboard shortcuts (I have tried a trackball but am not crazy about it).

In the meantime, here are two related and highly recommended reads. There remain signs of hope, even as we suggested in Things Fall Apart, but these are very dark days for the Republic. What comes out on the other side of the tunnel we're in may look very different--for better or worse.

First (h/t Ray So-Cal) from AmThinker, Jay Valentine:

Loss Of Trust: Elections And Vaxxing

Two interesting posts at Zerohedge touch on the "complete loss of trust" that is manifesting itself in seemingly unrelated areas of life. Seemingly unrelated, but in reality they touch on the breakdown of trust that the public has in our ruling institutions and elite.

The title of the first post is self explanatory, so I'll just add the initial sentences that will establish the connection:

"Complete Loss Of Trust": Half Of French Home Health Workers Say They'll Resist Taking Vaccine

Astounding new figures out of France suggest what is no doubt a broader global trend of hesitancy and skepticism when it comes to the current big push to 'vaccinate all'. 

Reuters in covering the country's vaccine rollout finds that merely around "half of health workers in French care homes do not want to be vaccinated" — even after many of these routinely witness the ravages of COVID-19 on the elderly and infirm. 

"There’s a complete loss of trust," one home health care worker and trade union representative was cited in the report as saying, reflecting resistance to the growing pressure ...

The post goes on to document similar attitudes in other Western countries. The point is simply this: The "complete loss of trust" is the loss of trust of the great unwashed, hoi polloi, the masses of the public who no longer have any faith in their rulers. All of this applies to America.

Switch gears, and James Bovard worries: Is The U.S. Going The Way Of Afghanistan? He's talking about electoral integrity, and what happens when that trust in the process is lost because of malfeasance on the part of the ruling elite. It's a long and somewhat rambling piece, but we can pick out some nuggets

Briefly Noted: The SCOTUS Confirms Its Abdication

As I'm sure everyone is aware, the SCOTUS declined to take up the Pennsylvania election cases, on a 6-3 vote. The lead dissent was written by Justice Thomas, with Alito and Gorsuch also dissenting. As Thomas put it (quote borrowed from Red State):

The Constitution gives to each state legislature authority to determine the “Manner” of federal elections. Art. I, §4, cl. 1; Art. II, §1, cl. 2. Yet both before and after the 2020 election, nonlegislative officials in various States took it upon themselves to set the rules instead. As a result, we received an unusually high number of petitions and emergency applications contesting those changes. The petitions here present a clear example. The Pennsylvania Legislature established an unambiguous deadline for receiving mail-in ballots: 8 p.m. on election day. Dissatisfied, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended that deadline by three days.

The court also ordered officials to count ballots received by the new deadline even if there was no evidence—such as a postmark—that the ballots were mailed by election day. That decision to rewrite the rules seems to have affected too few ballots to change the outcome of any federal election. But that may not be the case in the future. These cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address just what authority nonlegislative officials have to set election rules, and to do so well before the next election cycle. The refusal [by the SCOTUS] to do so is inexplicable…

…Not only did parties on both sides agree that the issue warranted certiorari, but there also was no question that petitioners faced irreparable harm. (“‘[A]ny time a State is enjoined by a court from effectuating statutes enacted by representatives of its people, it suffers a form of irreparable injury’”). Petitioners further established a fair prospect of certiorari and reversal. For more than a century, this Court has recognized that the Constitution “operat[es] as a limitation upon the State in respect of any attempt to circumscribe the legislative power” to regulate federal elections. Because the Federal Constitution, not state constitutions, gives state legislatures authority to regulate federal elections, petitioners presented a strong argument that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision violated the [Federal] Constitution by overriding “the clearly expressed intent of the legislature.”

To my mind this decision simply confirms what was apparent from the refusal to the SCOTUS to take up the Texas election lawsuit that was joined by numerous other states. As I stated at the time, this marks the definitive abdication of the SCOTUS from playing its full constitutional role as a co-equal branch of the government. These cases--so clearly of fundamental importance for our constitutional order as a republic--were very obviously declined on political grounds, and likely out of fear. I fail to see now how the SCOTUS can ever regain its former prestige. One can argue that the abdication took place at some earlier point in history, but to me this decision, by confirming the previous abdication, makes it official and irrevocable. I see no point in discussing it further.

ADDENDUM:

This is not the conservative court that Americans were promised. Barrett & Kavanaugh already look too weak to be taken seriously. The Federalist Society is a joke. The entire facade of institutional conservatism is now crumbling before our eyes. https://t.co/yUm6J6lt4G

— Emerald Robinson ✝️ (@EmeraldRobinson) February 22, 2021

A Fascinating Historical Analogy For This Faux Impeachment

Big H/T to Don Surber, who came up with the article that sketches out a fascinating and instructive historical analogy for the continuing constitutional hoax being perpetrated in the Imperial City on the Potomac, under the occupation of the New Army of the Potomac. We'll get to that shortly, but first I intend to quote a few passages from two other articles that address this hoax briefly but succinctly.

First of all, Jordan Davidson at The Federalist sketches out the most important element of the reply brief that Trump's attorneys have filed today--Trump Legal Team Decries Democrats’ ‘Outlandish’ Impeachment As Unconstitutional ‘Political Theater’. As we'll see, the lack of a legal or even a constitutional basis for this proceeding in the Senate plays into the historical analogy. Here is a passage toward the end of the article that sketches this out:

UPDATED: Why The Time Election Narrative Is Good News

Time has published a lengthy article that purports to tell how the heroic coalition of Big Labor and Big Business "saved" Election 2020--they're such patriots, looking out for the interests of We The People! If you believe that this story was put out to tell the truth of the election then I have a slightly used but still very serviceable bridge in Brooklyn to sell you:

The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election

Time wants you to believe this was a "bipartisan" effort, an "unlikely alliance" between Left and Right. Wrong. This was a "unipartisan" effort, as in Uniparty. What the appearance of this story tells us is this:

1) The Establishment realizes that they have so far been unable to control the public perception that Election 2020 was a Big Steal. That remarkably wide perception--in the face of a relentless full court disinformation press--bodes ill for the 2022 elections

2) As a result they're putting out a counter narrative to the Big Steal, the purpose of which is to make it look legit. In other words, it's yet another attempted exercise in perception management--and that's what tells us that they know they're failing. They wouldn't bother, otherwise. The appearance of candor in the story is simply part of the technique and is another indicator of desperation.

If you can bear it, read this bit of flim-flammery. You're supposed to believe that the Establishment is just oh-so-eager to tell us the Real Truth, the "Secret History". The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Trust us--we're not lying this time! Puh-leeze!

Patrick Byrne's Narrative On How Trump Lost The WH

Patrick Byrne has been putting out his narrative of how Trump lost the White House. It's a narrative of backstabbing, betrayal, and incompetence. For the most part it's the only narrative we have--certainly the most extended and comprehensive narrative--and so we have to pay attention to it. Several commenters have been linking to it as well as to commenters on it, such as Larry Schweikart.

It goes without saying that Byrne's narrative doesn't have to be treated in an all-or-nothing fashion. Like any narrative, it may well reflect a mix of motives--some praiseworthy, but others possibly self serving. Nor do such mixed motives necessarily negate the factual basis of the narrative. There is also the question of Byrne's understanding of what happened and why, and especially in judging the motives of others. The battle over the election played out in a very rarefied legal environment--more so, probably, than any other moment in American history. The issues were often issues of first impression and in all cases required delicate balancing.

It goes without saying that none of the foregoing observations should be construed as casting aspersions on Byrne. The considerations of motive and understanding that I've touched on apply in every such analysis. For that reason I'm reproducing here a comment from regular commenter Cassander which suggests caveats that we should all keep in mind. 

BRIEFLY NOTED: Matt Braynard Is Still On The Case

I hadn't thought of Matt Braynard and his work on the Big Steal for a while. But last night he appeared on Steve Bannon's War Room, which was picked up by TGP (I watched it there). You can watch EP 669 here (Blogger doesn't allow me to embed it, as far as I can figure out--Rumble, not Youtube). Braynard doesn't come on until about the 43 minute mark.

As I said, it turns out that Braynard is still on the Big Steal case and claims to have made enough progress at this point to come to some definite conclusions. You may recall that Braynard has been investigating election fraud in Election 2020, but strictly from a very traditional perspective. In other words, he's been coming through for-pay databases and public records to winkle out data on things like double voting, out of state voting, dead people voting, non-voters voting--the whole panoply of Dem election fraud practices. He doesn't go into the details with Bannon but he does state his conclusions (so far): There is excellent, strong evidence that Trump carried AZ, GA, and WI and, therefore, won the presidential election. In Braynard's own words:

What I’m finding and continuing to find, because we’re actually still doing research, and we’re looking forward to presenting it more aggressively without the constraints of the lawsuits we were entangled with initially, is that among those three states, the number of illegal ballots surpassed the margin of victory. Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona, without those three, Joe Biden isn’t president – and I think we can prove that fairly conclusively.

I was going to write a bit more on this topic, but Andrea Widburg at AmThinker has picked up on pretty much the same angle as I did (A data maven says fraud affected the election outcome). Here's why Braynard's work may turn out to be far more important going forward than many cynics might imagine.

Briefly Noted: The Cruelest Hoax Of All

Which hoax? We live in an age of hoaxes,  so there's a lot of competition for the honor of being the cruelest hoax of all. My vote still goes to the Covid hoax. I base that on the sheer unprecedented amount of damage done by this hoax: business failures, unemployment, hockdowns, depression and its attendant ills, education stoppages that hurt the poorest students most, mass fear bordering on--and not infrequently exceeding--hysteria, widespread paranoia and the breakdown of social solidarity. And last but not least--perversely mistaken withholding of effective treatments (the HCQ regime and Ivermectin) in favor of dangerous and often fatal "treatments", such as mechanical ventilation, leading to far too many unnecessary deaths. Most of this damage was inflicted in knowing violation of all scientific and medical norms regarding viruses in general and coronaviruses in particular. Now we're witnessing the rush to lift many of the absurd measures that were taken--simply because Trump has been ousted by our ruling oligarchy. Which leads to the very reasonable supposition that this was an essentially political hoax that took advantage of unscientific hysteria that was propagated with a purpose.

This morning my wife, listening to her usual CBS news radio, heard a preview of a story to come later. It seems "many doctors are "puzzled" because they haven't seen a single case of flu this whole flu season. I think we've all glanced at these stories about the mysterious disappearance of the flu. What's going on? 

I found an article that goes into the matter in quite a bit of detail, without offering a definitive answer: Why Has the Flu Disappeared?

UPDATED: Armed Protests? Or Not Really?

You've undoubtedly seen the headlines:

FBI warns of plans for nationwide armed protests next week

The headlines are similar at all the other MSM outlets--it's always about "armed protests" in all 50 state capitals.

The claims are said to be based on an "internal FBI bulletin." Some of the sites, like CNN and ABC, claim that you can read the FBI bulletin further down their pages, but that's not precisely true. You can't read the actual bulletin. What you can actually read is a further statement that the FBI put out after the leak was publicized. That statement appears to be intended to clarify the media hype.

However, this AP account does contain what purports to be a direct quote:

WASHINGTON (AP/WTNH) — Every state is now on high alert after the FBI sent out a warning of plans for armed protests at all 50 state capitals and in Washington in the days leading up to President-election Joe Biden’s inauguration.

This stoking fears of more bloodshed after last week’s deadly siege at the U.S. Capitol.

An internal FBI bulletin warned that, as of Sunday, the nationwide protests may start later this week and extend through Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration, according to two law enforcement officials who read details of the memo to The Associated Press. Investigators believe some of the people are members of some extremist groups, the officials said. The bulletin was first reported by ABC.

“Armed protests are being planned at all 50 state capitols from 16 January through at least 20 January, and at the U.S. Capitol from 17 January through 20 January,” the bulletin said, according to one official. The officials were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

The FBI issued at least one other bulletin — they go out to law enforcement nationwide on the topic — before the riots last week. On Dec. 29, it warned of the potential for armed demonstrators targeting legislatures, the second official said.

Here's how I read this:

Back To Covid: This Will Play Out Eventually

And it may very possibly play out during the first few months of the Dem Regime--if anyone has a better description for what's coming into being let me know. I can't accept that what's his name will be in charge of anything.

Anyway, here's what I'm talking about. Zerohedge is citing a poll conducted for John Solomon's Just The News:

Nearly Half Of U.S. Voters Believe Health Officials Have Been Misleading With COVID Data

To enunciate the bleeding obvious, those are not good numbers for the people who have been misleading "US Voters." And we all know that those "Health Officials" are closely identified with Blue State politicians. The poll was taken well before the implications of the NYMag expose on Fauci's funding of the Wuhan Lab's "research" that led to this insane Covid hoax. Wait till that information filters down to the masses--that the people misleading the masses were also the people quite directly behind the repressive hoax measures that have devastated the country. Clear evidence for the public's attitude is the dismal response to the call to become guinea pigs in an experimental vaccine study.

A closer look at the polling makes it look even worse than just the "nearly half of US voters" that are cited:

Nearly 50% of U.S. voters believe that public health officials have been misleading when providing data on the coronavirus pandemic, a recent Just the News Daily poll shows. According to the poll, forty-eight percent of voters believe public health leaders have “misrepresented the data” to build support for certain policies while 34% of respondents say officials “reported the true facts” on the pandemic. 

The remaining 18% were unsure one way or the other. 

That's a lot of people who have made their minds up that they were being conned, and it's not nearly so many who--against all the evidence--still believe what they're being told. And not many undecideds.

I'll say it again: This was a major mistake by Trump--to allow the hoax to continue for so long without speaking to the country.

If the Dem Junta reopens the country, will the response be one of pathetic, unthinking gratitude--a desire on the part of the masses to kiss the hands of their masters for not slapping them more and harder?--or will it be one of cold anger at the suffering inflicted? I'm betting that the reaction will be closer to the latter alternative.

That reaction will be playing out while the Dem's pursue their mania to designate virtually 70% of the populace as "domestic terrorists." It's not a good look, and I'm guessing that it won't end well. The GOP may get a wholly undeserved reprieve.

UPDATED: Jonathan Turley Hates Commissions, But ...

Is Jonathan Turley maybe the only person in DC who actually wants to find this stuff out? To conclusively prove or disprove just about anything to do with the "election"? To do him justice, Turley recognizes that something is broken and he thinks it should be fixed. Something like government of the people, by the people, and for the people, instead of of, by, and for "a small number of ambitious elite factions and coteries." That alone is at least a bit refreshing, given the amount of twaddle being propagated about our "sacred" capitol and blah, blah, blah. 

I hate federal commissions, but Americans need one to look into the 2020 election 

To restore faith, we must review how mail voting worked, analyze problems like uncounted votes, and conclusively prove or disprove fraud allegations. 

I have always hated federal commissions. Federal commissions are Washington’s way of managing scandals. They work like placebos for political fevers, convincing voters that answers and change are on the way. That is why it is so difficult for me to utter these words: We need a federal election commission. Not the one proposed by some Senate Republicans. And not like past placebo commissions. An honest-to-God, no-holds-barred federal commission to look into the 2020 presidential election.

Turley goes through a lot of history about the 1877 commission and commissions in general, which you may find interesting. However, given that Turley openly states that he does not personally believe the election was rigged or stolen, he says some things that reads like a pointed rebuke--specifically to Mitch McConnell's remarkable disingenuous speech last night but also to all the other usual suspect pontificators. He offers three reasons why an election commission is needed, but here's the key paragraph. I'll break it down into specific points, each of which give the lie to the narrative presented by McConnell and other RINOs. Indeed, these points actually call into question Turley's own assertion that the election was neither rigged nor stolen:

Should Trump Be Removed From Office?

That's a serious question. 

Might it be better for the nation if Trump were removed from office before 1/20/21? There might be some very real benefits to such an eventuality.

First of all, it would draw clear lines among the non-Dem political factions. It's always a good thing to be able to distinguish your friends from your enemies. And to know who the lukewarm are.

It would also unmistakably establish Trump as a martyr to the American cause--martyred through a Deep State hit--in a way that no amount of arguing about the various hoaxes could accomplish.

Think about it. This just popped into my head. Perhaps there are strong counter arguments.

Brilliant: The Road Ahead

Smart people are unfazed by the events of yesterday. After all, as I ... 

mark wauck January 7, 2021 at 8:11 AM

74M voted for Trump, and I doubt they'll repent of their vote. Trump has done the great service to the nation of pulling the masks down off establishment figures. I suspect that those who are now revealing themselves as fair weather conservatives will experience a very large drop in their credibility and influence, analogous to what has happened to Fox on a larger scale and what has also happened to the WSJ over the Trump years.

and commenter Cassander ...

Cassander January 7, 2021 at 8:47 AM

If you count unregistered children and friends and neighbors of Trump voters, maybe he's got 100 million supporters. Maybe more. That's a big number, which would appear unlikely to just apologize for having a different point of view and slink away so that Chuckie Schumer can "Change America".

noted this morning, there is still a future. Mitch McConnell's GOP--based, it seems, on attempting to foist unelectable females of a certain type (McSally, Loeffler, Ayotte ... no Blackburns need apply to Mitch) on an unwilling electorate --is not the model for the future that awaits us, or any successful political party, down the road.

The future happens a lot faster than most people can imagine, so it's best to be ready for it. John Daniel Davidson writes about that this morning: