A Clear and Present Danger

Posted: June 24, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | 2 Comments

For anyone that cares about the fate of our country now, or in the future, this was one busy week in Washington D.C.! While the Supreme Court was busy making our country less safe and rescinding a Constitutional right for the first time in our history (while threatening to continue to eliminate more in the future), the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (commonly referred to as the J6 Committee) continued its hearings. Yesterday was the fifth in the series, and at least to this observer, the most compelling of them all. Which is saying something as each has been ever more riveting than the previous ones and they continue to boggle my mind with the audacity of the ex-president’s attempted coup.

While we were aware of seemingly isolated events in real time in late 2020 and early 2021, the J6 Committee is able to connect the disparate dots into a comprehensive explanation of the attempted coup following the 2020 election. What seemed to me at the time as a series of egotistical bloviating statements, coupled with wild and preposterous claims by unprofessional and clueless attorneys acting simultaneously with unscrupulous election officials and elected officials in key swing states can now be described as a preposterous, but highly coordinated, well-executed series of conspiratorial schemes to decertify the presidential election to keep the former guy in office. For the first time in our history (there seems to be a lot of that these days), a losing president refused to conduct a peaceful transfer of power to his successor and tried to retain power for himself. The ongoing hearings reveal just how close we came to losing our Republic.

Many an amateur historian wondered how the democracies in Italy and Germany could lead to dictatorships in the 1930s. We now know how it happens because we came oh so close to having it happen here. A charismatic leader creates a cult-like following and then finds people within the system that are willing to do anything to gain power for themselves in support of the would be autocrat. Based on yesterday’s sworn testimony, we now have a poster boy for those that would overthrow our way of life. His name is Jeffrey Bossert Clark, an Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ). While his is a Senate confirmed position, he is relatively low on the hierarchy to be known to the average member of the public. He is now known far and wide as the man who was willing to stage a coup within DOJ in order to help the now ex-president stay in power. (As a side note, he was the subject of a pre-dawn visit by federal agents on Wednesday executing a search warrant to confiscate electronic devices for investigation into their possible use in a criminal enterprise.)

Mr. Clark worked a behind the scenes deal with the defeated president to become the Acting Attorney General of the United States. As was abundantly clear during yesterday’s testimony, Mr. Clark had no experience, expertise, or ability to run the DOJ. What he did have was the willingness to send out a bogus, deceitful, and unscrupulous letter to officials in Georgia and other states insinuating that the DOJ was investigating election fraud. Which was a lie. (Seemingly, the best way to find a place in the ex-president’s inner circle is the ability to unabashedly and unashamedly tell bold faced lies.)

His involvement seems like the “smoking gun” demonstrating the ex-president’s intent, ability, and effort to undo the free and fair election that gave President Joe Biden the presidency by roughly 7 million votes.

The then president continued to push the actual Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen and Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue to send out the letter mentioned above. For days and in multiple conversations they explained that they had investigated every claim of fraud or improper election activity and there was nothing that impacted the outcome of the election. It was a free and fair election. As he testified yesterday, and in Mr. Donoghue’s contemporaneous hand written notes provided to the J6 Committee, Mr. Donoghue and Mr. Rosen explained that they could not “just change the outcome of an election. It doesn’t work that way.” The now ex-president responded “I don’t expect you to do that. Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen.“

(In yesterday’s proceeding, sworn testimony from at least two sources included the fact that Republican Representatives Mo Brooks (ALA), Matt Gaetz (FL), Louie Gohmert (TX), and Scott Perry (PA) asked for “blanket pardons” before the 2021 Inauguration. Additionally, it is believed that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA) asked for one. There was also a request for blanket pardons for “every Congressman or Senator who voted to reject the Electoral College vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania.” aka the Sedition Caucus. Anyone that continues to support him now, knowing what we know with who knows what other gasp inducing revelations to come, is a traitor to the ideals of our nation.)

The ex-president knew that there was no corruption, he just needed DOJ to officially corrupt itself by signing a false document to fool the American public into thinking something was amiss so that he could use his allies in the Congress to decertify Electoral College votes for Mr. Biden and throw the whole process into chaos.

It was a premeditated plan with a beginning a middle and an end to keep him in power. As the hearings continue, we now know that there were multiple avenues of corruption intended to decertify Mr. Biden’s victory and to keep the former guy in office. The insurrection on 6 January was not a random act but rather part of a larger plan to pressure Vice President Mike Pence into changing the Electoral College votes, or, should that fail, bring down the Congress and decapitate the number two and number three office holders behind the president. We shall see what else the committee brings forward, but my guess is that the intent was to create such chaos and uncertainty with the attack on the capitol as to allow the president to invoke the Insurrection Act and declare Martial Law to keep himself in power until he could rig things to keep Mr. Biden from assuming the office.

There are two things that worry me going forward.

First, unlike former president Richard Nixon, this ex-president is not going away. He continues to rile up his cult followers in the public and in elected office to pursue the Big Lie that he won the election in, as he likes to say, “a landslide.” Over one hundred successful candidates for office in this year’s Republican primaries are advocates of the Big Lie. In many ways, the events surrounding the 2020 election were a dress rehearsal for 2024. Only a few real patriots that understood and stood by their oaths to the Constitution saved the day. Next time there will be people in place that do not take their oath seriously and will be willing to do whatever it takes to put their person in office. Apparently, some people put their oath to support and defend the Constitution in the same category as checking the box for terms of service to get on a web site.

As former Republican United States Circuit Judge John Michael Luttig, a conservative’s conservative, warned in a previous J6 Committee session, that there “was a war on democracy instigated by the former president and his political party allies on January 6” when “knowing full well that he had lost the 2020 presidential election… he and they set about to overturn the election that he and they knew the former president had lost.” He then went on to say that the ex-president’s actions today create “a clear and present danger” to the future of our democracy. Words no judge states lightly.

Second, what do we do about it? The danger of indicting and sending a former president to trial, under a new president from a different political party opens an entire series of questions about what that means to the future of our country. Does it set a precedent for every succeeding administration to pursue the previous one as punishment or payback? Would we be, as Dana Milbank of the Washington Post put it, “one bunch short of becoming a banana republic?” It is scary stuff. Unprecedented in U.S. history. It could start a Civil War — taking our current cold civil war to a hot one. Unknown territory.

On the other hand, the ex-president’s actions and those of his cronies and accomplices are also unprecedented. If we believe that in these United States “no one is above the law” then why would we not prosecute him? Clearly, I am not an attorney, but to this layman’s eyes the ex-president and many of his accomplices broke the law. They tried to overthrow the government. They were willing to establish an autocracy with one-man rule. Why should that go unpunished? If ever there was a political crime in our history since THE Civil War, this it. And he is planning to do it again. He told us as much. Holy Moly! As I have mentioned in this space on many previous occasions, autocrats from Mussolini to Saddam to Trump tell us exactly what they are going to do. They do not always succeed, but they have no shame and their ego is such that they are convinced that they can get away with it. Why let a petulant bully get away with crimes just because he happens to be a former president?

Taking the emotion out of it, hard to do, at least for me, there are pros and cons whichever way DOJ decides to go. There is every possibility that however Attorney General Merrick Garland decides to pursue this, or not, it could go south and turn out very badly for our country. To me, we have too much to lose by not pursuing every legal measure available to hold the former guy accountable. It is far more dangerous to our country in the long run to turn a blind eye to the coup ring leader. After each of his impeachment trials he was emboldened to take ever more egregious actions. If he is not held accountable for an attempted coup, who knows what he is likely to try next.

I agree with Judge Luttig. He is a clear and present danger to the future of our Republic. If one believes that, then there is no question as to whether to pursue a legal remedy to hold him accountable. Do it.

The Seditionists Among Us

Posted: January 31, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | 3 Comments

The United States Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, commonly referred to as the 1/6 Committee, was formed via a House resolution on 30 June 2020. Its membership was finalized on 25 July after the Speaker of the House added Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-ILL) to the committee. It consists of seven Democrats and two Republicans (there are only two after Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (CA) refused Republican participation over a dispute as to membership), and is chaired by Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS). We do not know the full extent of the information that they have collected to date, but it is known that they have interviewed over 300 witnesses and collected well over 35,000 documents. They are known to have subpoenaed 78 people, some of whom have testified, others are fighting it and some are under investigation or indictment for contempt of Congress. While the final report is not expected until late this coming summer, the committee has shared some information through carefully crafted subpoena letters and through media interviews. A lot of what we know now we instinctively or intuitively knew around the time of the events. What is coming out of the committee’s investigation is an understanding of the depth and breadth of the ex-president’s efforts to execute a coup to keep himself in office. It was a carefully thought out effort and not the disjointed and seemingly spurious or spontaneous collection of individual events that it at first appeared to be.

Think about that for a minute. A President of the United States tried to execute a coup to keep himself in office after what his own Attorney General and administration officials called the most secure and fair election in the history of the United States.

Not content to merely attempt a coup that failed at the time — mostly by luck it appears, as key people decided to uphold the Constitution rather than swear allegiance to one man — the ex-president continues to try to create the conditions to overthrow the current president. With the support of the majority of his party, an ex-president is purposely undermining our democratic ideals a year after leaving office and he continues to claim that he is the real president.

Apparently, the bulk of the Republican Party is okay with that.

Some of what they planned to do to retain Trump in power was obvious and heavy handed. Some of it was more subtle, with behind the scenes maneuvers to manipulate the certification process in the Congress. Here is some of what we have learned so far about the coup that may not be so obvious to casual observers:

  • Professor and Trump adviser John Eastman put together a memo (now called the Eastman Memo) that uses unprecedented interpretations of the 12th Amendment and Electoral Count Act to convince Vice President Mike Pence to decide in favor of Trump electors from key states and to disregard the official certified electors from states that President-elect Biden won.
  • This memo was the basis for electors in key swing states to put together an “alternative” slate of electors to substitute for, or at least to compete with, those submitted to certify Mr. Biden’s election. The Select Committee subpoenaed representatives from seven states that submitted alternate slates (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin). Not surprisingly, all of the documents have identical wording, font, paper and format — as though it was formulated elsewhere and sent to those “electors.” These forged documents were sent to the Senate and to the National Archives.
  • Key Republican members of Congress were coached on raising concerns over electors in those key states and were encouraged to substitute the Trump slates, or to have the official slates for Mr. Biden thrown out. Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) self-identified himself as one of those encouraging the Vice President to call the votes for Mr. Biden “unconstitutional” and have them thrown out.
  • An alternative plan was briefed in the Oval Office and to several Republican members of Congress that was outlined in a 38 page power point presentation by Colonel Phil Waldron USA (ret) that would have the sitting president declare a national security emergency prior to 6 January. That declaration would preclude the counting of the Electoral College ballots. They would then reject all machine counted ballots from November and mobilize the National Guard to seize all of the machines and paper ballots. The National Guard would be tasked to recount the ballots or to hold new elections in certain key states.
  • Among other documents, there is a draft 17 December 2020 Executive Order to seize all election related materials for “national security” reasons. A similar letter outlined plans for all Republican elected officials at the state and federal levels to ignore the “fraudulent” vote count and to “certify the duly-elected President Trump.”
  • The entire effort leading up to the 6 January insurrection was intended to either delay the certification of Mr. Biden, or to prevent it from happening through Trump allies in Congress. This is the reason for the 147 members of the Sedition Caucus in Congress to vote against certifying Mr. Biden’s election.
  • The insurrection itself was one of several steps aimed at stopping or delaying the certification process in order to at least keep Trump in office beyond 20 January, if not to keep him in office for a second term.

There is more. Much more. You get the idea. There was a vast, organized effort to keep Trump in office. A coup.

And now, this.

In his usual unhinged style, this past weekend Trump held a rally in Texas where he continued to rant and rave over the “stolen election.” Only this time it was worse.

Trump called for the “biggest protest” the country has ever seen in New York, Atlanta, and Washington DC. These are the very places where Attorneys General are investigating his coup attempt and his shady business practices from before 2016. He called the AGs “racist” — they all happen to be African-American and two are African-American women. For good measure he called them “mentally sick.” He also wondered aloud why the Supreme Court and other courts are not giving him “protection.” He lost every court case so far concerning the election and the release of his tax returns.

Ominously, he opined that the 6 January insurrectionists are being treated “unfairly” and that if necessary to be fair, he would pardon them all when he takes office in 2024.

So let’s put this all together. He has called for protesters to take to the streets in his support over a “rigged” election, given an undisguised dog whistle to white supremacist groups by calling black AGs racist, and said that he would pardon insurrectionists. If you need a green light from an ex-president to further incite violence and undertake a forceful coup, you just got it.

We cannot in good faith allow his blatant attempts to undermine our democracy to continue unchallenged. Where are all the “good” Republicans? How can people, as Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) did recently, as have other Republicans in Congress, say that if he is their candidate in 2024 they will vote for him? When does it stop?

There is no “both sides.” There is no “this is just politics.” This is not “what about Biden and taxes.” This is about nothing more fundamental than whether or not one supports the Constitution of the United States. If an elected official takes the oath to defend the Constitution and supports Trump, then they lied in saying “I do” and are unfaithful to their oath.

Let’s get to the bottom line.

Last night Trump released an “official” statement commenting on attempts to refine and update the Electoral Count Act where he denigrates the effort. It read in part:

“Actually, they are saying that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they want to take that right away. Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election!”

Any doubt about his intentions a year ago? Or now?

Any elected official that swore an oath to defend the Constitution and still supports Trump is un-American, un-patriotic and aiding and abetting sedition. They must choose between their oath and their allegiance to one man.

We can no longer pretend that he is irrelevant or just crazy and can be ignored. He is a maniac intent on overthrowing our democratic values and installing himself in office. It was an attempted coup and the effort continues. Wake up America!

There is no longer a question and it is no longer hypothetical. Trump is a threat and he and his accomplices are accountable under the law — ex-president or not.

Another Tough Year Ahead

Posted: January 4, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | 1 Comment

“I think the country needs a strong Republican Party going forward, but our party has to choose. We can either be loyal to Donald Trump or we can be loyal to the Constitution, but we cannot do both.”

—Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) on CBS “Face the Nation” on 2 January 2022

Welcome to 2022! Most of us are optimistic at the start of each new year that the coming year will be better than the year before. It is a time of hope, good will and enthusiasm. By nature, I am an optimistic person that believes when given a chance, the average person will do the right thing. Looking ahead to the coming year, I do not have that feeling.

We thought we had the pandemic under control in the summer and fall of 2021 and we didn’t. We now set new records daily thanks to the omicron variant. As we pass 825,000 dead Americans, we still have about 100 million of us that refuse to get vaccinated, swamping our hospitals with cases that squeeze out others with life-threatening illnesses or injuries. Indeed, many of those hospitalized with Covid-19 still refuse to believe that it is a thing. Republican politicians around the country encourage irresponsible actions in the name of “freedom,” even as they themselves are vaccinated. I did not imagine such abominable behavior when the true import of the pandemic first hit home. There are now new ethical decisions that none of us are prepared to address. Do we turn people away from the use of limited medical care after they chose to act irresponsibly in favor of those that have done everything right and still end up in the hospital? Do all of our insurance premiums go up to take care of those that deliberately choose to disregard all prudent actions? Tough questions that none of us thought much about before.

As serious a threat as the pandemic is to our well-being, a bigger threat looms ever closer to destroying our democracy. As we approach the first anniversary of the assault on the Constitution through the 6 January insurrection, we still have no one held accountable that was “in charge.” Roughly 750 insurgents that attacked the Capitol have been indicted or tried for the assault. The foot soldiers are being tracked down and punished, but the ersatz colonels and wanna-be generals that sent them to create havoc have not. We are now in another election year and the perpetrators of the studied attempt to overturn our democracy have not been held accountable. Indeed, those in and out of government, including the 147 members of the Republican Sedition Caucus are free to roam the country demanding faux audits (several are ongoing or about to begin in Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and elsewhere) over a year after all states certified the actual results. Countless court cases have been dismissed for a lack of evidence. Not one scintilla of evidence that anything harmful was done anywhere that would change the election results has been produced. And yet, it continues. I do not think that any of those perpetrating the Big Lie through court cases and audits truly believe that the election was stolen. Their goal is to continue to undermine election integrity and to create the conditions that if their preferred candidate does not win, then it is by definition a bogus election and must be overturned.

Thus, our great experiment in democracy comes to an end.

The safeguards that were in place in November 2020 will not be there this time around as extremist Republicans are systematically replacing bipartisan or nonpartisan election officials with their own hardcore believers at the county and state levels. Next time when a presidential candidate calls a state Secretary of State in charge of the election and says “So look. I just want to find 11,780 votes” he will get them. Numerous states passed new election laws that aim to suppress the vote. That arguably can be overcome with a concerted effort to get out the vote and by educating voters on how to cast a ballot in spite of those efforts. More troubling are the laws like that proposed in House Bill 2720 by the Arizona state legislature that allows the Republican controlled legislature to override the popular vote count and send their own chosen electors to the Electoral College — for any reason.

As I have written in this space before, there are Bills passed by the House and sent to the Senate that would standardize national elections across all fifty states. Currently, they are stalled in the Senate by the filibuster and the reluctance of numerous Senators to create a “cut-out” of the filibuster to allow for a simple majority to pass election laws — something, by the way, that since the mid 1960s used to enjoy a bipartisan consensus to protect the vote. No longer. Lost in the discussion is the practical logic that the numerous state voter suppression and cancellation laws passed in Republican legislatures pass on the basis of a simple majority. So by the Senate’s logic, states can restrict the vote at their discretion, even if it is by only one vote, but the mighty Senate of the United States cannot protect it with an elected simple majority. Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) recently announced that he will hold a vote no later than 17 January (Martin Luther King Day) to pass voting rights legislation — and will include a measure to override the filibuster if so needed. It is unclear if the votes are there. My feeling is that they are not. I hope that Leader Schumer forces the vote in order to put on the record those Senators that oppose voting rights.

Meanwhile, Donald J. Trump and his minions continue to bray about the “rigged” election that he lost fair and square — as attested to by many in his own administration including his personal attorney who also happened to be the Attorney General of the United States at the time. While they are making what is professionally called “a ton of money” pushing this scheme, it is also clear that they were serious in their intentions. The House Select Committee investigating the 6 January assault has unearthed a treasure trove of information about the days leading up to the insurrection. At that, they have only publicly talked about a fraction of the information that they have gained from interviewing 300 witnesses and collecting over 30,000 documents. They are putting together the case that most of us knew instinctively — Trump and his sedition bound cohorts had a plan to deny Joe Biden the White House to keep Trump in power. We now know that the wheels of that plan began to turn as early as the day after the election and was based on numerous simultaneous and complimentary efforts to throw out Electoral College votes from key swing states — or better yet, replace the certified votes with new ones picked by Trump’s cronies. Their ultimate goal was either a revised Electoral College count, or to throw it to the House of Representatives where under the terms of the Electoral Act of 1887 and the 12th Amendment to the Constitution Trump would win as each state has only one vote, regardless of the number of Representatives from that state. The purpose of the actions by Trump, the Sedition Caucus, pressure on Vice President Pence, his “War Room” in the Willard Hotel and other Trump efforts was to delay the certification of the Electoral College vote so that the rest of the plan could come to fruition.

The attack on the Capitol was the last effort to delay that vote. In my view, it was intended (and I mean intended — it was no spontaneous eruption) to further aid in delaying the certification of the election in order to buy more time to complete the plan. If members of Congress were killed, injured, or kidnapped, in the process, too bad, but so much the better as that would certainly slow things down. I further think that when all of the evidence is assembled, that a secondary element of the plan was the expectation that counter-protesters would attack the Trump supporters creating a general melee and chaos, allowing Trump to declare martial law and delay the certification proceedings for an indefinite period of time. The then Commander-in-Chief watched the assault on TV for 187 minutes before calling it off. What was he waiting for? Clearly, at worst he was hoping that they would succeed. At best, he was derelict in his duty as the Commander-in-Chief. Either way, he needs to be held accountable.

(A side note: I am not by nature a conspiracy theorist. I am not falling prey to that with my comments above. I think that the evidence will show that there were multiple avenues of obstruction to their plan and the belief that counter-protesters would attack is the reason that the National Guard was not quickly deployed. They were being held in reserve to “rescue” the Trump supporters.)

They had a plan. It had branches and sequels. It failed. They are now putting into place the mechanisms to succeed next time around. That scares me greatly.

As Representative Cheney said, it is time for Republicans to choose to follow their oath to the Constitution or to continue to actively undermine our country in the support of one man — as if in a cult — who clearly wants to be an autocrat for life. Just this week, he “endorsed” Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban for reelection. Mr. Orban is a hero of the American right-wing and held up as an example for our own leaders to emulate. To the rest of the world, Mr. Orban is an autocrat who eroded all of the rights of a former post-Soviet democracy, turning the country into a democracy in name only. As the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin is said to have proclaimed, “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how?”

There is one final consideration. Should we or should we not hold a former president criminally liable for his actions and take him to trial and possibly incarcerate him along with his accomplices? Following Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974 over the Watergate scandal, President Gerald Ford chose to pardon him in order to relieve the nation of the ordeal of a possible trial and the chaos that may ensue. Further, in the United States we have no tradition of incoming administrations of another party prosecuting former political enemies. Indeed, we scoff at other nations that do so and label them “Banana Republics.” Impeachment by the House and conviction in the Senate is our preferred method of holding presidents accountable. To take one to trial would be unheard of and perhaps set a horrible precedent for the future. But…..

We have never had a president in our long history try to overthrow a duly elected successor in order to keep himself in power. Even after such a failed attempt, we have never had another ex-president continue to claim that he is the “true” president and to incite others to overthrow the government. Even a year later. Those actions are unprecedented and therefore the remedy needs to be unprecedented. I hope that the Department of Justice puts together a case against all of those that were involved, including the ex-president. Although I am out of the prediction business, my sense is that once again, Trump will walk away without consequences. Perhaps that may be best for our country in the long run, as a trial and conviction of the ex-president would, I fear, lead to widespread violence across our country. It may be a lose-lose proposition.

So, my optimism for 2022 is subdued, at best. We are in for some tough times as a country. Not the toughest — the Civil War comes to mind — but a dangerous time for certain.

Stay healthy and may good fortune find you this year.

Cowardly Copouts

Posted: February 15, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , | 2 Comments

As we well know now, the Impeachment Trial for Donald J. Trump ended on Saturday with 57 votes to convict and 43 votes to acquit. Since 67 votes (a two-thirds majority) were required to convict him, Trump is not held accountable for his actions in fomenting an insurrection culminating in an attack on the Capitol building on 6 January, 2021. A shameful day for our country.

My schedule in these days of a pandemic was such that I could watch or at least listen to most of the proceedings. I am not an attorney, but I learned a lot about various interpretations of the Constitution and about legal concepts. Foremost in my education was understanding the term “but for.” In this case, it was clear that but for Trump, there would have been no Big Lie, no campaign to overturn a free and fair election, and no attack on the Capitol. Take Trump out of the equation — say he did not exist or more realistically, was not president or a candidate for president — and there is no attack. Period. It is unimaginable that any other presidential candidate would have provoked the same attempted coup that Trump undertook. Today, I am not so sure that it couldn’t happen again in the future. A smarter, more knowledgeable future losing candidate might be able to pull it off, especially if that candidate is aided and abetted by key election officials and members of the House and Senate.

Most disappointing during the week were the spineless votes cast on the single Article of Impeachment. Of the 43 Republicans that voted “not guilty” I would say that some — those in the Sedition Caucus — would have voted for Trump regardless of anything that he did. They voted to acquit not from fear, not from an appreciation of his policies, but rather for pure personal power reasons. Their sworn oaths of office are just words to them, not a solemn promise that protects our country. I would put six or seven of the Republican Senators in this category. The others mostly voted to acquit, in my opinion, out of fear. Some out of political fear that they might lose their job, some out of personal fear given the nature of the domestic terrorist threat that saturates Trump’s supporters, and some out of fear that their colleagues might criticize them. Some could possibly be found in all of those camps. What was galling was that immediately after the vote, many of the “not guilty” crowd came to the Senate floor to give speeches that point to the fact that they did think that Trump was the inciter-in-chief, but they let him off on a technicality. Pick your copout — as there were several — but the most common was that a former official could not be tried by the Senate. Once out of office, impeachment does not apply.

There are several things wrong with that approach. Foremost, of course, is that Trump was impeached while in office. When the House tried to convey the Article of Impeachment to the Senate, then Majority Leader Mitch McConnell adjourned the Senate so that the Article could not be delivered. It was out of session until the Inauguration. Remember that, because it will come up again. If it is possible for common sense to be a factor, it is logical that a president or other official subject to impeachment under the Constitution cannot commit a “high crime and misdemeanor” and then resign and get out of a conviction. Indeed, there are precedents in our own history where people were tried by the Senate after they left office.

As I understand it from my Constitutional Law 101 course watching the proceedings, the Founding Fathers left the rules and procedures for impeachment and subsequent trial rather vague. In this case, well over 100 Constitutional scholars of all political stripes opined that the Senate sets its own rules for the trial and that most certainly a president can be tried after he leaves office for offenses that took place while in office. Prior to the actual trial, this issue came up. In a bipartisan vote, the Senate voted 56-44 that it was Constitutional to hold the trial. That should have settled the matter and the presumption moving forward should be that the Constitutionality of the trial is not a factor when rendering a verdict. But then, in this day and age, and especially in Trump World, rules do not seem to matter.

The shamelessness of the 43 can best be epitomized by the speech that Senator McConnell gave immediately after the vote. He hung his “not guilty” vote on his claim that the trial was un-Constitutional. He did so by claiming that the House did not deliver the Article of Impeachment in a timely manner. (See above. Hypocrisy, you’ve found a home.) He did so even after the majority of his speech condemned Trump and his actions in great detail and said that “there is no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.” Whaaat? It appears the Mr. McConnell may have wanted to vote to convict. He probably would have brought more Republican Senators along with him by voting to convict, possibly even reaching the 67 vote threshold. But he would not have been with the majority in his own party and thus would not be the Republican Leader. His decision to acquit was a pure personal power move. He likes being his party’s leader. There were only a few profiles in courage that day.

What are the takeaways from this episode? I have a few that I discerned from the proceedings.

  • There are no impeachable offenses. Two precedents have been set with Trump. You can try and get a foreign power to intervene in our elections and not be held accountable. Was the Ukraine case too complicated, arcane, or insignificant for you? Okay, how about Obstruction of Congress? Obstruction of Justice? Trump dodged all of those. But attempting to overthrow the government of the United States? That’s not an impeachable offense? If a president attempting a coup is not worthy of a conviction on that charge, then I am hard pressed to think what would be worthy.
  • It is okay to use violence to try and overturn an election. In fact, if you lose and don’t like it you can use any means necessary to over turn it. Bully election officials. Lie. Threaten state officials. Lie. Disenfranchise millions of Americans and nullify their votes. Lie. Ignore election laws. Lie. Send a mob to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College vote. If someone in your administration — say, the Vice President of the United States — doesn’t help you overturn the election then send white supremacists to track him down and hang him. (“Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence.” I hope all of those loyal Trumpists in the Sedition Caucus took notice of what loyalty gets you with Trump.) Violence is okay if you don’t win the vote and you can do anything you can think of to try and change it.
  • The minority rules. The conservative political observer David Frum wrote a very interesting article in The Atlantic titled “The Founders Were Wrong About Democracy”. In it he argues that the Founding Fathers thought that by setting up the government so that head strong populist charlatans could not hoodwink the American public into wild and self-defeating actions, they would create a stable and enduring republic. They specifically did not want a true democracy because they did not trust the vast unwashed, uneducated, and ill-informed average American (all white men, by the way) to do the right thing. But what we have now is a minority (Republicans) that control nearly every aspect of government by their ability to block actions favored by the majority of the people.
  • The Electoral College exacerbates the problem of minority rule and aids hooligans like Trump in their attempts to thwart the votes of the majority. Trump lost the popular vote by over 3 million ballots in 2016. He got about 46 percent of the vote. As the math shows, that it is less than Al Gore, John Kerry and Mitt Romney got when they lost. There were other even closer elections. Trump did not win in a “landslide.” In 2020 he lost by over 7 million popular votes. In the current era that is a landslide. It is too big of a number to overcome. So where did Trump focus his efforts? He focused on states to try and get them to change their Electoral College votes. Where did he focus his efforts in Congress? On the certification of the Electoral College vote. He was hoping to throw the election into the House of Representatives where, although the Democrats have the majority, the vote would be by state, and the Republicans control the most state delegations. One state one vote. Thus South Dakota gets the same vote as California. We can see that the Electoral College is vulnerable. It is an anachronistic vestige of another time.

It was a near miss. Trump came closer to pulling it off than I think most people realize. Despite the hand-wringing over Trump’s acquittal and the jubilation of the Seditionists and Trumpists (mostly all the same folks), Trump is an injured power broker. He is soon to be engulfed in significant legal challenges that are not ignorable now that he is an ex-president.

For the moment, I rejoice in having a competent president, addressing the nation’s crises. Best of all I don’t have to hear about Twitter attacks, Big Lie rallies, or see a failed showman suck up all the air whenever he shows his face. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen the face of the twice impeached worse president ever in weeks. And I sleep a lot better at night as a result.

I hope we learn the lessons of these past weeks and months. The system is not perfect. It can be broken. We need to address the issues that were exposed and close the legal loopholes. Forgetting the past and moving forward will not work in this case. Our republic is too important to pretend that it doesn’t need fixing.

Crushing An Insurrection

Posted: January 26, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | 1 Comment

Only one week into the Administration of President Joseph R. Biden, there is a definite change in tone from the White House and around the country. The remarkable Inauguration Day, in spite of the pandemic and extremely tight security precautions, brought home the sense that indeed, a new day had dawned and hope is in the air. Unfortunately, there is some unfinished business that must be attended to in order to keep our country moving forward.

Donald J. Trump is impeached for a second time. The Senate trial is scheduled for the week of 8 February. It is imperative that after a due process, the Senators vote their conscience and carry out their Constitutional duty rather than play party politics. This is not a “both sides do it” issue. The impeachment is not “politics as usual.” Only one side tried to destroy our country. As I will review below, for the first time in our nation’s history a president, of these United States, actively sought to overthrow the government and install himself as the unelected leader of the country. So far, the Trump supporters have presented a circular argument. They continue to raise questions about the electoral process claiming that it was subject to widespread fraud and was rigged. Trump and his cultists in the House and Senate continued to repeat these claims loud and long. This is propaganda utilized to its fullest to convince his loyal followers that the allegations — and it never moved beyond unproven allegations — were true. The House and Senate cultists argue that since their constituents believe the election was rigged, then they must represent their constituents. Of course they think that there was fraud because their elected officials tell them that. And they do this with a straight face. Senators Ted Cruz (TX) and Josh Hawley (MO) are the leaders of this ridiculous argument for their own personal ambitious goals. They use allegations that they create to justify their claim that it should be investigated — even though roughly 90 court cases proved otherwise and all 50 states certified the election, including those run by Trump’s own party. Even Trump’s personal attorney, oops, I mean the Attorney General of the United States, said that there was no fraud and that the results were legitimate.

And yet, after the insurrection that caused five deaths at the Capitol, eight Trump cultists in the Senate and 139 in the House voted to overturn the election. Learn their names. They are guilty of sedition and are as culpable as anyone else for the death and destruction that resulted from their lies. Unfortunately, most will not be held accountable. Probably none of them will be held accountable. Some of them are proud of the havoc that they wrought.

Make no mistake what they are saying and doing. Those Trump followers, the majority of their party, are demonstrating their belief that any candidate but their own is not legitimate. Period. They believe that stopping Democrats by any means necessary is better than succumbing to their “socialist” ways. Democracy be damned. White Christian men are supposed to be in charge. One party believes in elections and the peaceful transfer of power and one believes that such quaint customs apply only when they win. As the newest Senator from Alabama, a member of the Sedition Caucus, and eminent scholar Tommy Tuberville put it “my dad fought 76 years ago in Europe to free Europe from socialism.” In his speech he later explained that his dad helped in “liberating Paris from socialism and communism” during World War Two, therefore Democrats must not gain power. Facts just do not matter to them.

The Senate trial is a place to start. Contrary to the revisionist stories starting to be spun, Trump had a long pattern of trying to overturn this free and fair election. It was not a spontaneous act. The lead up to the attack started well before the election. For months, Trump repeated at his rallies that the only way he could lose was if the election was “rigged.” He touted fraud at every turn. He made baseless claims about mail-in voting and bogus concerns about voting machines. These despicable lies were the only foundation to his campaign’s numerous lawsuits around the country. They were all based on allegations, not facts. Every case was shot down. To put a finer point on it, the maker of the voting machines, New Dominion Voting Systems, is going after those that spread the lies. They just filed a defamation lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani for over a billion dollars (yes, billion). Other lawsuits caused Fox News to retract their statements repeating the lies against Dominion and to confirm that there was no fraudulent use of the machines. Other news outlets such as Newsmax had to do the same.

In court, baseless allegations do not win cases. Facts do. If you lie in court, there are penalties. Apparently, the Trump cultists in the House and Senate have no fear of retribution in the courts. They may be surprised.

After losing every meaningful court case surrounding the election, Trump pressured election officials in Michigan. Then he pressured the Michigan legislature. When that did not work, he tried pressuring the Pennsylvania legislature. When that did not work he went after officials (Republican, but that did not matter to him) in Georgia and Arizona. When that did not work he made his now infamous phone call to the Republican Georgia Secretary of State and threatened him with criminal proceedings if he did not “find 11,780 votes” — one more than Mr. Biden’s margin.

But that was not enough. Upstanding state and local officials refused to cave to his demands. So he moved on. We now know that he plotted with an attorney in the Department of Justice (DOJ) to fire the Acting Attorney General, bypass the chain of command and install a person as the Acting Attorney General that was willing to bring the full power of the government to get the election overturned. When that plan was thwarted he wanted the Solicitor General to take a case directly to the Supreme Court to have millions of votes thrown out.

It seems a pattern is developing here. But, wait! There’s more! And it gets worse.

Trump started Tweeting in December urging people to come to Washington DC for a “wild” “Save America” rally on the day the Electoral College votes would be certified by Congress. Trump campaign money and former staffers were used to help organize it. In the days before and again at the rally, Trump pressured Vice President Mike Pence to defy the Constitution and overturn the election by decertifying the Electoral College votes. Before the rally, Mr. Pence told Trump that he could not and would not decertify the votes. As a result, Trump implied to the mob at the rally that Mr. Pence was a threat to his continued campaign to overturn the election. They understood what they were being told to do. Mr. Pence was now a target. Many groups that participated in the attack clearly pre-planned their actions based on Trump’s statements at rallies and over Twitter. The attack on the Capitol was definitely not a spur of the moment spontaneous attack.

Trump sent the mob to the Capitol to “fight” for his re-election. When they broke through police lines and violently entered the building he did nothing to stop it for hours after the riot started. Numerous reports indicate that he actually enjoyed it. His followers were “fighting” for him like no one else would do. Reliable reports indicate that Mr. Pence had to fill in as the Commander-In-Chief to get the National Guard moving into the fray because Trump would not do it. (This should also be troubling to all of us. Separately, an inquiry should be held on this point. If the Vice President was the de facto Commander-In-Chief, there was a very real breakdown in Constitutional law.)

Now the Trumpists are arguing that the Impeachment and trial is “divisive”. As if defying the will of the people at the ballot box, fomenting sedition, and sending insurrectionists to overthrow the government is not divisive. Spineless politicians such as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (CA) change their story daily. Originally he said that Trump “bears responsibility” for the attack. Now he says “I don’t believe he provoked it” and that “we all have some responsibility” for the attack. Perhaps he realized that if they convict Trump, then the whole cabal is admitting their own guilt in the plot.

So if the argument now is to “move along — nothing to see here folks” how many dead police officers or dead politicians would it take to convict him? Apparently one officer beaten to death by the “demonstrators” is not enough. Four other deaths is not enough. Would it be an impeachable offense if the mob got ahold of Mr. Pence and/or Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and harmed them? Would Leader McCarthy’s stance be different if he had been taken out of the House in zip tie handcuffs and put on trial on the Capitol steps? A near miss of a massive catastrophe does not absolve anyone of a crime.

More importantly, many experts on the dark side of our society where the white nationalists, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois (Boys), white supremacists and others operate say that for the attackers and their supporters, 6 January 2021 was their equivalent of 19 April 1775 at Lexington and Concord. They view the attack as the opening shots of the coming revolution. Some are ardent Trump supporters, some support Trump as a means to an end, but the goal is to overthrow the government. Just because they failed this time doesn’t mean that they have given up on doing so.

Without punishing every domestic terrorist that participated, without convicting Trump in the Senate, without holding politicians responsible for the Big Lie, we send the message that it is okay to do it. Without punishing those proven guilty to the fullest extent of the law, then 6 January was merely a dress rehearsal for what is to come. Whether or not we think that is true, the insurrectionists think it is. Whether or not you believe that Trump really expected to overthrow the government and have himself installed as the leader, the insurrectionists believed it. Whether or not you think Trump’s message was often racist, the racists thought he had their back.

Without accountability we cannot begin to heal and without healing there can be no unity.

I will be surprised if the Trump defense team actually tries to defend his actions. What will ensue in his “defense” is a Constitutional argument that an ex-president cannot be removed from office that he has already left. Therefore, they will argue, to try him, much less to convict him, is un-Constitutional. I am not an attorney and I am not a Constitutional scholar, but that line of argument makes no sense to me. If it carries the day, then no president can be held accountable for their actions. Even when, as in this case, it was the worst action ever taken by any president in our history. Trump systematically and with malice of forethought worked to destroy the Constitution and people died as a result. To that we just say “oh well?”

Trump supporters in the House and Senate remain afraid of Trump. Why this is so, totally escapes me. However, if in their hearts they wish he was gone, a conviction is the way to usher him onto the dust heap of history. Unfortunately, for most of them, cowardice trumps honor and truth. When the Senate Trumpists acquit him for a second time, it will make him relevant again. He would have no power if they did not give it to him. Apparently, for them, holding power is more sacred than their oath to support and defend the Constitution.

End it now, or suffer the ongoing violence and acrimony that our country can ill afford now, in the midst of a pandemic, or ever, if we really stand for what we say we do.

The Big Lie

Posted: January 19, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | 4 Comments

Little did we know when Donald J. Trump delivered his inaugural address four years ago that when he spoke of “American Carnage” he was setting an aspirational goal. He succeeded.

We have 400,000 dead Americans thanks to his incompetence and indifference to putting measures in place across the country that could have effectively stopped or certainly slowed the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. In days, we will pass the number of Americans killed in World War II. Before it is over, we have a shot at surpassing the 675,000 Americans lost in the 1918 flu pandemic. What a proud record.

Trump fomented racial division and supervised the rise of white nationalist and other supremacist groups throughout the country. Where these groups existed in the shadows in the past, they are now front and center in American politics and a threat to many of us who despise their values. We have Q-Anon believers as Members of Congress. We have governors as the focus of kidnap plots to try them for “treason” because Trump told them to take back their state from the “tyranny” of having to wear a mask and social distance. As he said after the “Unite the Right Rally” in Charlottesville in 2017 that resulted in fighting in the streets and the death of a counter-protester, “there were good people on both sides.” A clear signal to those groups that he supported them. He further encouraged them with his statement in the fall debates in front of a national audience when he said to the Proud Boys, “Stand down and stand by.”

The list can go on and on. I often wonder how one person and one administration can be so incompetent, uncaring, feckless and destructive. One has to work hard to cause as much mayhem as Trump has created. I cannot help but sometimes think that given his relationship with Vladimir Putin that perhaps Trump did work hard at causing so much trouble and nearly causing our country to collapse under the weight of his singular focus on working only for his own power and riches.

His crowning achievement for the title of the Worst President Ever came two weeks ago when he attempted to overthrow the government. As we learn more and more about the events surrounding the attack on the capitol on 6 January, we come to realize that it was a very close thing for the survival of our republic and our system of government. Organized groups were, it seems, ready to kidnap and probably kill Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Other Senators and Representatives barely escaped the mob’s wrath and probably would have been severely injured or killed if the mob had gotten to them. In my view, if the seditious mob had succeeded in destroying the legislative branch of our government, I have no doubt that Trump would have accepted the result and used it to keep himself in the presidency. As we now know, the mob missed their targets by less than a minute. It surely would have been a horrific blood bath as the Secret Service would have fought to protect the Vice President and the mob would have reacted with even greater fury. We were so lucky as a nation. As it was, the “peaceful demonstrators” beat a police officer to death and their actions resulted in four others dying at the capitol during the melee.

Their blood is on Trump’s hands as it is on the rest of the Sedition Coalition made up of a few “Republican” Senators and over two-thirds of the “Republican” Congressmen and Congresswomen that voted to overturn the most fair and free election in the history of our country. (But don’t take my word for that last statement. It was so judged by those in Trump’s Administration tasked with protecting the election, confirmed by the Attorney General, reinforced by states throughout the country led by both Republicans and Democrats, and upheld by over 60 court cases that were dismissed or laughed out of court for their frivolousness and remarkable lack of evidence.)

It is the lowlight of the Bizzaro world that we lived in over the last four years.

Now called “The Big Lie” by many, it was a concerted effort — months if not years in the making — for Trump and his soulless allies to make millions of Americans think that the election was rigged, or unfair or otherwise set up to deny Trump his “landslide” win. It really started in 2016 when Trump shouted from the rooftops that the election was rigged in Secretary Hillary Clinton’s favor. Even he was amazed when he won. None-the-less, he claimed that he lost the popular vote because of fraud. He created a commission to look into voter fraud and to find the fake votes. You may remember that the commission quietly stopped its work a few months after its creation because they were unable to find any evidence of any fraud that changed the outcome.

Throughout 2020, Trump claimed that the only way he could lose was if the election was rigged and massive fraud occurred. Rally after rally, speech after speech he spewed this same lie over and over. Millions of his followers believed him. His enablers and cohorts in Congress reiterated the same message. And now we are here.

Even as I write this piece, Trump has yet to admit that President-elect Joe Biden won the election. Trump goes home a loser in every way possible. Likewise, his accomplices in the Senate and House refuse to acknowledge that the 46th president was duly elected by the will of over 81 million Americans. Shameful. Somehow they stick to their blind loyalty to Trump out of fear of some political or personal retribution. They pledge their true faith and allegiance to a wannabe dictator rather than to the Constitution of the United States. They disgrace their oath and their personal honor. If Trump is such a political “kingmaker” then please explain how the Republicans, during his watch, lost the House, the Senate and the presidency. Some kingmaker. I hope they do as well into the future.

The consequences of their seditious actions and continued defiance will be felt long after the inauguration tomorrow. Those same seditious Representatives and Senators — and other elected Trumpists — claim that to try Trump after his impeachment would be “divisive.” They argue that it is now the duty of Democrats and President-to-be Biden to bring unity to the country — this as they continue to argue that the election was not valid. It would be laughable if it were not so dangerous. The pure unmitigated gall of these people! Do they think that all Americans are so gullible or short-sighted or fooled by their sleight of hand? Apparently. Or do they have further plans to rile up the Trump base to wreak further havoc on our republic?

At this moment, news reports indicate that some of these “patriot” lawmakers are seeking pardons from the president to absolve themselves of responsibility in the attacks. If this happens, they surely must be removed from the Senate. Such shining examples of leadership they are!

Try them all! Trump should be convicted in the Senate for his crimes against the state. The counts in the indictment could have been volumes long, but the House leadership wisely focused on his seditious actions in sending a mob to destroy the capitol. It cannot stand without punishment. I know there are numerous arguments pro and con about doing so — along with Constitutional concerns that have yet to be tested in court — but I cannot imagine that his actions over the months leading up to the insurrection should be allowed to go unpunished. Think of the precedent. A president can foment any illegal act that he or she desires near the end of their presidency and feel perfectly comfortable that they will get away with it. If no one is above the law in the United States of America then a president cannot pardon himself and he is liable for impeachment and conviction for actions in office even after they leave. The president wouldn’t even have to wait until the end of a term. Commit any impeachable offense and then resign with the knowledge that in this case, actions do not have consequences. It seems no different than retired military officers who are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) for the rest of their lives.

I cannot believe that we can begin to heal until those that fomented the attacks on our fragile state are held accountable. The FBI and other agencies are tracking down and charging the domestic terrorists that stormed the capital. Those that encouraged them to take those actions should be equally accountable. Senators that voted against verifying the Electoral College results should be censored and removed if they don’t resign, but they most certainly will not. If criminal charges are appropriate under the law, they should be held to account. Likewise with the roughly 147 Representatives that voted not to verify the results. Remember, these votes came after the attack on the capitol.

Tomorrow is a new day. Thankfully. President Biden has a huge job ahead of him. It will not be easy to conquer the pandemic, restore the economy, re-establish our leadership role in international affairs and accomplish all the other tasks ahead needed to clean up the mess Trump leaves behind, all while those that he must work with continue to push the canard that he is an illegitimate president. It could take years to undo the damage. Only with the help of those on the right side of history can he succeed. I trust that like many former members of cults, once his followers no longer have to drink the Kool-Aid of divisiveness, grievance and lies that they will come to their senses and help to restore the America we thought we knew. Some will. Some will not. As an optimist, I hope that more will than will not.

It will not be an easy road. We have a long way to go. Bringing those that sought to intentionally destroy our country to justice will help us to make our way. They must all enjoy the full consequences of their actions to the fullest extent of the law. This includes an ex-president and his family.

On to a new chapter in our history!

The Cult Trying To Steal Our Country

Posted: January 3, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

At a time when we should be looking ahead to the good times coming in 2021, we find that there is significant danger in the coming weeks as Donald J. Trump continues to act like a mob boss and actively work to overturn the results of the election that he lost by over seven million votes. The very foundation of our democracy is under continuing attack as the president, members of the Senate and the House and scores of white nationalists, Q-Anon conspiracists and others attempt to overthrow the duly elected incoming president and vice-president. This is the most dangerous attack on our national values and core principles since at least 1860.

In the last twenty-four hours we experienced the spectacle of Mr. Trump calling the Secretary of State of Georgia to tell him to “find” enough votes to give the state’s electors to him. As reported in the Washington Post, and captured on audio given to the reporters, he wailed, threatened, whined and cajoled the Georgia officials for over an hour. The president wants them to “reexamine” the results, “with people that want to find answers, not people who don’t want to find answers.” In other words, fabricate new results. He repeatedly complained that “there’s no way I lost Georgia. There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.” In fact, he lost by 11,779. There were three recounts. The state legislature certified the vote. The Republican governor certified it.

Mr. Trump’s efforts could be criminal. They certainly are immoral and unethical. But then what do we expect from the worst president ever that will leave the White House as an impeached one-term president?

Meanwhile in the Congress, the Sedition Caucus of about 140 Trumpist Representatives and twelve Trumpist Senators will object to the certification of the Electoral College votes. As explained by Senator Josh Hawley (MO), he wants the allegations of fraud in Pennsylvania investigated. He says he owes it to the 74 million voters for Mr. Trump who “are not going to shut up” and must have their concerns addressed. Which, of course, ignores the 81 million people that voted for Mr. Biden that he wants to disenfranchise. Equally despicable is the effort led by the Chief Sedition Officer of the group Senator Ted Cruz (TX). He wanted to argue a case against certifying the election in the Supreme Court and is now organizing his fellow rebels without a cause to try and create a special commission to look into the “unprecedented allegations of election fraud, violations, and lax enforcement of election law and other voting irregularities.” He argues that the commission will “significantly enhance the legitimacy of whoever becomes our next president.” Nice. Note that their plan, as with all of their other “facts” are merely allegations. No one has produced any evidence of any activity that would change the results of the election. NONE. The Trump campaign lost over 60 cases in appearances before judges in multiple states including many judges that were appointed by Mr. Trump. Twice the Supreme Court turned them away. States conducted as many as three recounts with no findings of any significant issues. The person from the Department of Homeland Security, in charge of making sure our elections were secure, appointed by Mr. Trump, said that this was the most secure election in our history. Attorney General William Barr, appointed by Mr. Trump and who acted like his personal attorney, said that there was no fraud. There is no “whoever becomes our president” because only one person won the election and the other one is going to Florida.

What we really have, is a significant group of elected officials that apparently believe that if their candidate did not win, then we should disenfranchise millions of Americans and overturn the election. We have elected officials that put loyalty to the leader of a cult above the oath that they swore to the Constitution. That is the bottom line. Think about that. They are more loyal to one man than to our country. That man demands loyalty and they cave like a child’s cardboard box in a hurricane. Thank goodness there are still some patriots in the president’s party that recognize that we are a nation of laws and who will not go along with the coup.

I cannot emphasize enough how abominable their actions are. This is a full-on attempt to undermine our democracy. Period. Yes, they are making money off of this. Yes, they think that this will help them get re-elected. Yes, they are playing to the Trump base. It is still an attempt to overturn a free and fair election.

Additional danger comes from Mr. Trump’s detestable effort to stir up trouble in Washington D.C. He is calling for his supporters to come to a “wild protest” on 6 January, the same day that Congress is required to open the official Electoral College votes to certify the election. On Friday another member of the Sedition Caucus lost yet another attempt in court to overturn the election and called for “violence in the streets” to block Mr. Biden from becoming president. I trust that the FBI will be visiting Congressman Louie Gohmert (TX). Groups are calling for turning the national mall into “an armed camp.” The Proud Boys and other extreme white nationalist groups claim that they will have thousands of members on the streets. Some have threatened to keep members of Congress from getting to the capitol building to vote. It will be a dangerous time.

We have four years until the next presidential election. A serious bipartisan effort is needed to review every aspect of our system of voting from how we vote, to how we train poll workers, to reviewing whether a ranking system is a better way to elect our officials to doing away with the Electoral College or at least standardizing the way electors are chosen. We certainly need to close legal loopholes that allow state legislatures or the Congress to change the expressed will of the voters. It is a near miss this time. We cannot be sanguine that all will go well in the future.

I look forward to the vote on Wednesday, however many hours it may be delayed by objections or protesters or any other reason. Mr. Biden will be president on 20 January. History will record the names of those that sought to overthrow a duly elected president of the United States and install an avowed autocrat. To me, their actions are seditious if not treasonous. I will leave it to attorneys and constitutional scholars to sort that out. The bottom line is that they want to destroy our country by destroying our right to vote.

The best news for the coming year is that as of 21 January, we don’t have to give a damn about anything the orange menace has to say.