BC POLITICS
Saved by @Alex1Powell

Goddamn it, Texas, I don't have time for this today.

Fine. Fine. A brief thread. (Yesterday I said I'd do a brief thread on the Michigan decision and finished an hour and a half later. Can't let this be that, today).

 OK. Texas filed a motion for leave to file a complaint against PA, GA, MI and WI in the Supreme Court. Someone else can lawsplain to you how that works, or you can google the highlighted rules, but briefly, this is a thing they can theoretically do
There is a MASSIVE contradiction at the heart of this complaint, and its doomed for other reasons, too (standing, laches, abstention)
They have three theories for why they can sue:
1) Violation of the Electors Clause of the Constitution ("the Constitution gives state legislatures exclusive control of the manner of selecting electors and judicial action can't change it)
2) "Counties applied different rules"
And 3) "you didn't have as strict voter ID requirements as we'd like, and that's unconstitutional for reasons"

That's it. That's the case
They're also leaning into "every violation of state election law is a violation of the constitution" which will fly like a lead balloon
OK, on to the Complaint
And the contradiction.

The core of their complaint is that when the Constitution gives state legislatures the right to direct the "Manner" of appointing electors, that right is exclusive, and the "Manner" set by the legislature can't be varied *at all* by courts or executives
So what relief do they want? "SCOTUS, please extend December 14th voting date for presidential electors, which Congress set by statute"
The 14th, btw, is NOT the deadline for "appointing" electors. The statutory deadline for appointing electors is Nov 3 (Election Day). (Everything that happens after election day, including later certifications, is just determining *who* was appointed that day, by the election)
The 14th is the day that Congress, by statute, set for the appointed electors to actually vote for President
But the Constitution - in the very same section that says State Legislatures decide the "Manner" in which Electors are appointed - also says this:
This creates 2 problems for Texas and Trumpian Dead-Enders.

First, Congress already set the day for choosing electors as November 3. No state can choose electors on any subsequent date
Second, Congress set the date for the vote as 12/14.

And if the delegation of "Manner" to state legislatures means that state courts can't, for example, extend ballot receipt deadlines because the delegation is EXCLUSIVE and only state legislatures can set those rules, then ...
The delegation of "Time" to Congress must - must, no way around it - ALSO be exclusive, meaning the Supreme Court would have no authority AT ALL to extend the December 14th date, either
Either they're both exclusive (in which case SCOTUS can't grant the requested relief) or they are both subject to judicial oversight (in which case Texas's substantive claim is doomed). There's no third option
Texas then adopts the crazy conspiracy theories that have already been presented to and repeatedly rejected by other courts around the country.
Holy fuck they didn't
They did. They fucking did

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Seriously people. Executive orders mean exactly nothing to what Trump legally can or can't do to fuck with the election results (which is zero). Stop letting idiots make you crazy

There are two very simple, very basic reasons executive orders are meaningless here. Understand them, please

1) the president cannot issue an executive order that grants himself a power he does not already have. For example, the president could not issue an executive order saying that from now on he can make laws they don't need to pass Congress

(I mean, he could sign an executive order saying that, but it wouldn't have any legal effect)

2) the president can issue executive orders at any time.
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Akiva Cohen
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So Dominion sued Rudy for defamation. How are they ever going to allege actual malice?
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Akiva Cohen
@AkivaMCohen
OK, #Squidigation fans, I think we need to talk about the new Wisconsin suit Donald Trump filed - personally - in Federal Court last night. The suit is (as usual) meritless. But it's meritless in new and disturbing ways. This thread will be


Not, I hope, Seth Abramson long. But will see.

I apologize in advance to my wife, who would very much prefer I be billing time (today's a light day, though) and to my assistant, to whom I owe some administrative stuff this will likely keep me from 😃

First, some background. Trump's suit essentially tries to Federalize the Wisconsin Supreme Court complaint his campaign filed, which we discussed here.


If you haven't already, go read that thread. I'm not going to be re-doing the same analysis, and I'm not going to be cross-linking to that discussion as we go. (Sorry, I like you guys, and I see this as public service, but there are limits)

Also, @5DollarFeminist has a good stand-alone thread analyzing the new Federal complaint - it's worth reading as well, though some of the analysis will overlap.
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Akiva Cohen
Akiva Cohen
@AkivaMCohen
Somebody asked me about this idiotic "PenceCard 2: Electric Boogaloo" article, and people, just stop worrying about this stuff.

The conspiracy wing of the GOP is going to keep pumping out these "Ten Neat Tricks to steal an election [number 8 will shock you!]" articles straight through the inauguration. (Yes - don't expect this to stop after the electoral votes are counted)

None of it is real. None of it has any legal basis. It's fantasy written by fantasists for coping MAGA-ites who find reality just too painful to accept. Ignore it.

This particular flavor of wishcasting was written by Ted Noel. Unless there are two "Ted Noel"s writing nonsense for the American Thinker, Noel is a doctor, not a lawyer or scholar, who nevertheless writes about legal issues

This actually makes me feel a bit better, because the thought that a *lawyer* could think that Pence had "plenary power" to discard state election certificates for any reason he chose is - even after watching Wood, Powell, Kaardal, and the rest - somehow too hard to contemplate
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Akiva Cohen
Akiva Cohen
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OK, let's start talking about the House's 80 page brief on impeachment. It really is an incredibly well-done piece of work. There are some things I'd do differently and some pieces I didn't love, but overall, it's very very good.

Again - this thread will happen in fits and starts. I'm swamped at work and this will come in 10-15 minute chunks as I take a break

Let's start by taking a look at the table of contents. After a 4-page intro (that's relatively long, don't love it), the brief spends a solid 30 pages walking through the facts underlying the impeachment - and, the subheadings tell us, tying in Trump's general refusal to accept


the election results with everything that followed. This is a strong rhetorical approach, but it comes with dangers: the President not only had a legal right to contest the election results, but the GOP Senators pretty much all backed that right, strongly.

It's going to be important to thread a needle of saying "this set the stage for what came after" without putting yourself in a place where you're trying to convince the Senate that the challenges themselves were impeachable. That won't fly
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Met a Brazilian-American Lyft driver from San Diego who passionately attacked the racism of Republicans, then switched to passionately defending Bolsonaro.

If I were Thomas Friedman, I could tell you what this means.

Met a Haitian-American in a restaurant who said he'd always vote for Democrats because of the immigration issue, but that he has conservative beliefs too. "I don't want to pay for someone's abortion!", he declared.

Met a Latino Lyft driver from San Jose who said that while he was liberal, California was getting too liberal for him and he was considering moving to San Antonio.

Again, not being Tom Friedman, I am unable to offer any commentary on the political and policy implications of these conversations.

I guess my only thought is that political opinions are pretty complex and multidimensional, out there in the real world.

(end)
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STEALTH JEFF
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@drawandstrike
Ok I was wrong about theHouse. 2 years of legislative gridlock = not fun. Few bills passing.

Control of the House is useless when it comes to keeping Trump from declassifying all the SpyGate docs. Or stopping an Inspector General from releasing a report.

Trump still gets control of judicial appointments so we can expect another 100 judges over the next two years. This time there’ll be no McCain or Flake playing the Maverick role with their swing vote.

That new margin in the Senate is huge if another Supreme Court seat comes open.

So from the responses I’m getting, people seem to think if Trump declassifies the Spygate stuff now, nothing happens.

Are you under the impression federal prosecutors have to wait until CONGRESS finishes an investigation and makes criminal referrals before the DOJ can act?

There’s a federal grand jury on McCabe right now. Did Congress ever finish it’s investigation and make a referral to the DOJ against him?

No.

BUT INSPECTOR GENERAL HOROWITZ DID. On finishing his McCabe leak report.

Funny how nobody remembers that.
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@drawandstrike
A lot of people don't understand that Trump & his incoming team didn't face a normal transition period, like it was over a in a matter of a few weeks or months.

The DOJ transition period JUST ENDED when Sessions left. Almost 2 exact years to get it there.

Pompeo at the CIA took over a year before he was done and ready to shift over to the State Department.

All kinds of stuff has been going on behind the scenes nobody leaks or talks about.

We only had the barest mention of the fact the Clinton Email investigation restarted

Nobody leaked in a year that Huber was deep diving into the Clinton Foundation.
Keep that in mind as all the usual suspects continue to INSIST nothing is happening/going to happen.
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Alright, I'm going to explain this one more time because I keep getting tweets like "people who vote for politicians who let them die of hypothermia deserve to die of hypothermia."

The people who voted red in Texas are, by and large, relatively fine right now. Yes, the storm has hurt them but the storm was going to hurt everyone.

But. They're either rich enough that *their* power wasn't cut off or rural enough that they have fireplaces and wood and wells.

Those millions without power are in places like Dallas county and Tarrant county and Harris county, I.e., the urban places that have the highest concentration of blue voters.

So it's not "(all/most) people voted for hypothermia and now they will fittingly die of hypothermia".

It's "(certain) people voted for the folks in cities to die of hypothermia, and they are, while the aforementioned voters are safe and dry and relatively comfortable."

Well, gosh, why don't those voters *do something* rather than passively being killed??

Do you know how many people live in Harris county? 4 million. Do you know how many ballot drop-off boxes they were allocated last election? 1.

1 box for 4 million people.
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Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer \U0001f4c8\U0001f52d\U0001f34c
Rachel "The Doc" Bitec...
@RachelBitecofer
1. "They're leaving! They're leaving!"" yell seditionist as they watch House members fleeing the floor through the glass doors the only thing (+ some under-armed officers + office furniture" that protected our elected REPs (same ballot as Trump, each & everyone

@McConnellPress

2. of them felt so inclined towards martyrdom and/or possessed the weapons (Jesus, what if they'd has a grenade & guess what, in America, yes, you can come up w functional equivalents of that bc barring people from them is a betrayal of freedom so great we must simply acquiesce

3. their eventual death tolls. One functional "freedom grenade" down that hallway, tossed w ease through a hole in the glass door, could have easily hit anyone fleeing.Unless it was Mo Brooks, MTG, or one of their well-known crazy boosters, here's a thing @LeaderMcConnell ought

4. to reflect upon as he makes his CRITCAL pivot decision, which he could rally 17 people & start a fight for control of the party that rest of the country will help him with,EVEN AFTER ALL THE SHIT HE'S DONE TO PEOPLE, YES, THE REST OF THE COUNTRY WOULD HELP HIM IF HE WAS TO

5. RALLY 17 SENATORS FOR IMPEACHMENT, he'd find his whole 🌎awakened. And Mitch, as far as I understand it, you could do it anonymously!! How much would THAT fuck w them?? How great would it be, for the 1st time in 5 yrs, to be the one w power- you LOVE power! Think of the FUN!
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We’ve all grown up listening to stories of Shri Krishna. This one is a famous story of Shri Krishna in Guruvayur Temple, also called Dakshina Dwaraka.


There lived a villager who planted coconut saplings and had promised that he would offer the 'first coconut' from each of his coconut trees to "Guruvayurappan". When the trees started to yield coconuts, he collected the first coconut from all the trees in a sack 👇


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