Monday, December 28, 2020

THE LEFT PUSHES BACK ON THE STEPHANIE MOHR PARDON

THE LEFT PUSHES BACK ON THE STEPHANIE MOHR PARDON

BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN DONALD TRUMPLEFTISMPOLICING

President Trump brightened my Christmas season when he pardoned former police officer Stephanie Mohr. Now, the Washington Post and its leftist sources have brightened it even more by complaining about the pardon.

Their unhappiness makes me happy. It also tends to confirm the wisdom of Trump’s decision.

The first point to make is that the Post has a stake in the persecution of Mohr. Its sensationalized reporting led to the injustice Mohr suffered. As I explained here:

The Washington Post ran a series of articles alleging police brutality in Prince George’s County. As as a result of the Post’s series, the FBI launched an investigation that soon focused on the canine unit. The investigation led to an indictment of Mohr on federal civil rights grounds for ]a] 1995 incident. She was charged one day before the statute of limitations on her alleged offenses expired. . . .

The frenzy that followed [the Post’s reporting] apparently failed to produce any convictions other than those stemming from this one incident.

Now, Mohr, the only significant scalp taken as a result of the Post’s attack on the police, has been pardoned. No wonder the paper is unhappy.

The Post expresses its unhappiness by quoting allies in its attack on the Prince George’s County police. They claim that the successful prosecution of Mohr (it took two trials to convict her) paved the way for needed reforms.

Let’s assume for purposes of argument that it did. This doesn’t make her ten-year prison sentence just.

Executing Mohr would have sent an even more powerful message to the County’s police force than the ten-year sentence did. I doubt the Post thinks the death penalty would have been proper in a case where the alleged victim suffered only a wound requiring ten stiches.

If anything, the notion that Mohr was used as an example to achieve public policy goals (whether worthy ones or not) argues in favor of a pardon based in part on the excessive nature of her sentence.

The Post and its allies fail to dispute either of President Trump’s reasons for issuing the pardon. One reason is that Mohr “was a highly commended member of the police force prior to her prosecution.” That’s true. She received numerous commendations for apprehending and subduing criminals. Catching criminals may not matter to the Post, but for anyone who cares about public safety it’s a plus.

The other reason given for the pardon is the excessive length of Mohr’s sentence. Neither the Post nor its allies explains how it can possibly be just for Mohr to have been imprisoned for ten years for a dog bite that required ten stiches.

The Post quotes a lefty law professor who complains that the pardon sends “a message that police violence is less serious than other kinds of violence.” But the ten year sentence sent a message that violence inflicted by the police on suspected criminals will be treated more harshly than other kinds of violence.

Mohr’s sentence would be excessive even if she bore sole responsibility for the dog bite. But she did not.

According to the facts as stated by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in her case, Mohr released the dog after her training officer sought and obtained consent from the officer in charge of the scene. The training officer was acquitted. The officer in charge took a guilty plea in exchange for his testimony against Mohr and was sentenced to 15 months in prison. (Mohr’s testimony was that she released the dog because the suspect ignored repeated instructions to follow police orders. If so, she shouldn’t have been convicted of any crime.)

Thus, far from bearing sole responsibility for the dog bite, Mohr doesn’t even bear primary responsibility under the only version of the facts that renders her culpable. Clearly, then, her long sentence was a miscarriage of justice.

I’m glad President Trump did what he could to mitigate the injustice. If that makes the Post and its anti-police allies unhappy, all the better.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/12/the-left-pushes-back-on-the-stephanie-mohr-pardon.php

BIDEN DELAYS THE PAIN OF HIS IMMIGRATION POLICIES

BIDEN DELAYS THE PAIN OF HIS IMMIGRATION POLICIES

Candidate Joe Biden pledged to reverse the immigration policies implemented by the Trump administration. His campaign site’s immigration page promised he would “take urgent action to undo Trump’s damage and reclaim America’s values.”

Biden almost certainly will carry out the “undo” part of his promise. However, he has already backed away from the “urgent action” part.

From the Washington Post:

Top advisers to president-elect Joe Biden said Monday they will not immediately roll back asylum restrictions at the Mexico border and other restrictive Trump administration policies, walking back some of Biden’s campaign promises for “Day One” changes.

(Emphasis added)

In other words, the Biden campaign promises in question were lies.

The Post explains that the incoming administration is worried that “easing up too quickly on Trump’s enforcement system could trigger a new migration surge at the border.” It would, indeed, trigger such a surge. But Biden knew this when he made his “Day One” promises.

However, as Mark Krikorian points out, Team Biden is just delaying a border surge. He writes:

The problem for Biden is that it will be politically impossible for him to keep the programs [that have prevented a surge] — Remain in Mexico, Title 42 expulsions, safe third-country agreements with Central American countries — in place indefinitely. Nor is Mexico likely to continue for long its policy of blocking migrants at its own southern border with Guatemala — something it started to do only because of Trump’s threat of trade sanctions.

When those impediments are removed, the basic logic that drove the border crisis will reassert itself: If you can step across the border, or even just present yourself at a port of entry, and you claim to fear persecution, more likely than not you will be released into the interior (since Biden has also pledged to end detention of illegal immigrants, whether they brings kids with them or not). Then, whether or not you actually go through with an asylum application, whether or not you show up for hearings, whether or not you get a deportation order, you can stay indefinitely with no fear of deportation (because Biden has also said only violent criminals will be deported).

(Emphasis added)

Krikorian suggests that Biden is making a political mistake by delaying the border surge his policies are bound to produce:

Ironically, by delaying the full effect of his immigration promises, Biden sets up a situation where news of the renewed border crisis caused by his rollback of Trump’s policies may only break through the inevitable media blackout just when the midterm-election campaign is underway. Republican candidates would do well to start preparing now.

(Emphasis added)

And we should prepare to see those “Republicans pounce” headlines in mainstream media outlets.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/12/biden-delays-the-pain-of-his-immigration-policies.php

Sunday, December 27, 2020

PEAK PROGRESSIVE?

PEAK PROGRESSIVE?

tent-city-los-angeles.jpg

In the minds of most progressives, as well as some horrified conservatives, California is the harbinger of America’s future. Governor Gavin Newsom sees his state as a model, claiming California is “the envy of the world” and the great bastion of social justice. “Unlike the Washington plutocracy,” he boasts, “California isn’t satisfied serving a powerful few on one side of the velvet rope.”

Yet it is ever more clear to ever more Californians that our state is becoming exactly the vast gated community Newsom warns about. As Ali Modarres showed in “The Demographic Transformation of California” (2003), the “shared prosperity” of the Pat Brown years were based on a broad-based economy spanning the gamut from agriculture and oil to aerospace and finance, software, and basic manufacturing. In contrast, the Newsom progressive model is built largely around one industry—high tech—which provides increasingly little opportunity for most Californians, and now shows disturbing signs of moving elsewhere.

Current progressive policies are chasing key companies out of the state—including, just within the last week, tech giants Tesla, Hewlett Packard Enterprises, and Oracle, all of which are heading to Texas. But the real problem lies in the state’s fading appeal to outsiders. It is losing domestic migrants and, increasingly, losing appeal to immigrants as well. California retains many of its great assets—a huge concentration of technical talent, a robust grassroots economy, unmatched physical beauty, and a remarkably pleasant climate—but these are being increasingly squandered. The question now is whether Californians will challenge the status quo.

California Values

The progressivism that has emerged in California, unlike previous forms, is not a movement against entrenched power. It is an odd admixture of high-tech libertarianism with a quest for a more spiritual and, most critically, environmentally sustainable future. This amalgam of “cybernetics, free-market economics, and counter-culture libertarianism“ constitutes what British academics Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron described as “the California ideology.” 

In the early days of the tech revolution, some imagined an almost utopian, communitarian society on the horizon—one that contrasted with the hierarchical structure found in Boston and eastern tech areas (see Annalee Saxenian, Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (1994)). The Californian author Stewart Brand, writing in Rolling Stone in 1972, predicted that when computers became widely available, everyone would become “computer bums, all more empowered as individuals and as co-operators.” It would be a new era of enhanced “spontaneous creation and of human interaction.” As Jaron Lanier pointed out in in Who Owns the Future? (2013), the “early digital idealists” envisioned a “sharing” web that functioned “free from the constraints of the commercial order.”

This utopian vision got a critical boost from the military and space programs (see Dirk Hanson, The New Alchemists (1982)), but even absent that help it held some relationship to reality. The tech economy in the suburbs south of San Francisco, as in aerospace-driven Southern California, allowed much of the workforce to buy homes, raise families, and enjoy a broad-base prosperity. The area, note two left-wing scholars, Manuel Pastor and Chris Brenner in Equity, Growth, and Community (2010), was also among the most egalitarian in the nation. It was a great place of opportunity for many—including immigrants, particularly from east Asia, who both set up P.C. board operations and increasingly launched larger firms on their own.

The Road to Oligarchy

The mythos of bohemian, enlightened capitalism helps explain why at the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011, anti-capitalist demonstrators held moments of silence and prayer for the memory of Steve Jobs, a particularly ruthless capitalist. Some even see the tech oligarchs, as the progressive writer David Callahan suggests in Fortunes of Change (2010), as a kind of “benign plutocracy” in contrast to those who built their fortunes on resource extraction, manufacturing, and gross material consumption.

Read the rest of this piece at American Mind.


Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

http://www.newgeography.com/content/006888-peak-progressive

Warrior Warriors, Not Social Justice Warriors

Warrior Warriors, Not Social Justice Warriors

Kurt  Schlichter

This month is the 30th anniversary of me arriving in the Persian Gulf for Operation Desert Shield, which became Operation Desert Storm, which finally became the Operation Desert Something that counts for the third star on my perfect attendance ribbon. And this milestone arrives coming just as our military ceases to be a serious organization.

Look, I’m no Audie Buttigieg terrifying the Taliban from my workstation, or a Dick Blumenthal giving Charlie what for during the Tet Offensive from Fort Connecticut. I just showed up a couple times. Thirty years ago right now, I showed up in a place called Log Base Alpha out in the middle of the Saudi Desert. 

I ran a heavily armed carwash, and due to the might of VII Corps – the most powerful military formation in human history – the closest I came to seeing any action was watching CNN. Note that this was before CNN became a steaming cesspool of commie lies and talking taters.

But I was there in theater, as a small, insignificant part of a serious United States military. And a serious United States military was able to pick up the equivalent of a city of a half-million people, drop it in a wasteland in the center of one of the top five most isolated nations on earth, and proceed to annihilate an entire enemy army in under 100 hours.

A serious military can do seriously amazing things.

I fear we are in the unserious mode today, and with a Biden* administration looming there will be no push towards the kind of seriousness that would keep thousands of body bags from coming home the next time we face a serious enemy. 

Note that I speak of senior leaders not the troops, though the unseriousness will eventually trickle down to the squad level if not purged.

So, what do I mean by “unserious?”

Well, we have a lot of generals and admirals out in public talking about how important diversity is, as if they are barely keeping a lid on the cauldron of prejudice that is our military. It is pleasing to the SJW hustlers in D.C. It is pleasing to our enemies. It is not serious.

Serious is figuring out how to wipe out the Chinese growing forces before they sink our Pacific fleet, which if they cannot do it today, give them a couple years. Unserious is babbling about diversity all the time.

The military is, or rather should be, the antithesis of diversity. At the outset the diversity fetish – and generals play this idiotic game because their civilian leaders reward it – is based on the assumption that the military is rife with racial, sexual, and other bigotry. That is part and parcel of the poisonous critical race theory analysis of society – all aspects of society are evil, and all aspects of society must be purged and purified. Guess what the cultural hand sanitizer is? Marxism.

But, back to the military. Fussing over diversity is a false confession of systemic racism (and other -isms) in the military, and it’s a damnable lie. The military is not only not racist, it is America’s leader and role model for equal treatment of citizens. When I left the Army and went to Loyola Law School, where the rich scions of the Westside libs went if UCLA wouldn’t take them, you know what shocked me most? Their parochialism and soft bigotry. Oh, they weren’t out spewing invective like some Klan jerk (I remind you that the KKK is a Democrat creation). They just didn’t know anyone whose skin tone wasn’t mayonnaise, and being nice to their gardener was about as far as they went. I had just come from a place where everyone was different, yet were in all important ways the same – camouflage. 

Fun Army Aside: I deployed from Germany and did not get those bitchin’ desert camo uniforms until after the ground war ended. I went through the whole war dressed like a tree in a place with literally no trees. 

Here’s a simple fact: every hour an infantry company spends listening to some consultant explain how a man chose to be a woman and we all have to pretend he’s now a girl is an hour that infantry company is not training to destroy our enemies through fire and maneuver. Someone is getting destroyed in the next war, and if we aren’t destroying the enemy, then the enemy is destroying us. 

“My condolences, Mrs. Rodriguez, on the loss of your paratrooper son. I want you to know that we generals made a conscious decision to take time away from training him relentlessly in the crucial skills necessary to survive and win on the battlefield and instead tried to teach him that America is a racial hellhole and that gender is a matter of whim. You can be proud that he rests in peace forever woke.”

Oh, that’s not a joke. You have 24 hours in a day to prepare. I say use all 24 of them to prepare for war. Our unserious military leadership disagrees. It is literally deciding that training in actual military stuff is less important that indoctrination in the kind of gooey nonsense we feed Ivy League sophomores with daddy issues.

Commanders set priorities. It’s their decision. They need to own it. 

In any case, this roiling idiocy over racial identity has got to be making the Chinese – who are deadly serious – howl with laughter. In fact, if they did not know us better – and from the sloppy slobbering corruption of our ruling class, they know us pretty damn well – they might worry that our SJW insanity was really just a clever way to punk them.

But they do know us well enough to know it’s real. When you have generals and admirals talking about diversity when they could be talking about, say, taking hills or not crashing our destroyers into cargo ships, then diversity is the priority. That is a choice. And choosing that is absolutely unserious.

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2020/12/24/warrior-warriors-not-social-justice-warriors-n2582023

I Moved From Locked-Down Virginia To Open Florida, And Faces Came Back To Life

 I Moved From Locked-Down Virginia To Open Florida, And Faces Came Back To Life


Here, life has felt incredibly normal. It's also revealed how abnormal the 
lifestyle I followed in Virginia really was.

OCALA, Fla. — Last Sunday I plopped a steaming hashbrown casserole and a bowl of freshly sliced oranges down on one of a row of endless folding tables covered in those flimsy plastic tablecloths you get at the dollar store. The casseroles were outnumbered only by the pans of homemade cinnamon rolls, and the fruit section was meager: it was a good Southern Baptist potluck.

Church ladies buzzed around, removing tin foil from tin pans and putting serving spoons in each dish, while others flipped pancakes on a portable griddle. Rows of chairs and tables were set up under the oak trees and the typical Florida December weather made me regret wearing a sweater. I loaded my plate with food and it wasn’t until I sat down that I had an epiphany: I had missed potlucks. Thanks to coronavirus, I guess buffet-style anything has become terribly unstylish in some places.

Until recently, I’ve been at school in Loudoun County, Virginia, where Gov. Ralph Northam has been busy inflicting harsher shutdown orders. Masks are required almost everywhere up there, and big gatherings are out of the question. Multiple friends had to cancel their wedding receptions this month due to the new restrictions.

I got so used to wearing a mask that every time I watched a movie it seemed odd for the actors to be bare-faced. Leaving a store, sometimes I’d make it all the way to the car before even realizing I still had my mask on.

It wasn’t until I came home to Florida — where COVID-19 restrictions are much freer and usually left to local government — that I noticed how different life was. On my flight home, I reached from my seat by the window to hand my snack wrapper to the flight attendant. The older gentleman next to me took it from my hand to pass it along. It caught me off guard: this stranger was willing to touch something that I had eaten from? He wasn’t afraid of my germs?

Thoughtful gestures that had always been normal suddenly seemed surprising — which made me realize how many of those everyday connections we’ve lost this year. Since I’ve spent some time in Florida, life has felt incredibly normal. It’s also revealed how abnormal the lifestyle I followed in Virginia really was.

For one, I didn’t realize how much I was missing by not seeing people’s faces. I don’t object to people wearing masks if they feel safer; it’s their personal health decision. But when I arrived at the airport to see my family for the first time since August (mid-semester breaks were another COVID casualty), I could actually see their faces.

I went to a café to study the other day and walked past a young pregnant mother with her toddler in tow. None of us were masked, and the toddler and I got to smile and wave at each other as we passed.

Even things that used to annoy me reminded me of what I had missed. I had to slow down for a school zone the other day because kids were actually in school. I never knew I could feel so much joy at slowing down to 20 miles per hour. There were elementary school kids running around the playground for recess.

The downtown scene here is even further proof that people are living their normal lives, unobstructed by fear. My family went out to dinner the other night at a patio bar overlooking our downtown square, all lit up for Christmas. Families took Christmas photos in front of the lighted trees, and others caught rides in horse-drawn carriages circling the block. The patio was packed with guests from a wedding that had just taken place; it was a huge party, unlike the sweet but limited ceremonies my friends were forced to have in Virginia.

While the chain coffee shops like Starbucks and Dunkin’ are closed to indoor patrons, my favorite local coffeeshop is open and more popular than ever. (And why buy overpriced, mediocre chain coffee anyway?) Looking around, I only see one customer wearing a mask, and only one of the baristas.

There’s a sign taped to the door that says, “The city council feels it is at their best interset to infringe upon your personal constitutional right and feel they can manage your life better than you. We will not do this…we will not force you to wear a mask!”

“All are welcome and we appreciate your supporting local,” the sign adds. I went Saturday morning with my family and we had to wait for a table; we ran into an old friend while we were there. That same day, we went to the downtown farmers’ market. Vendors offered free samples and sold fresh produce, a live musician sang “Folsom Prison Blues,” and no one told me to wear a mask.

I’ve flown in and out of the Orlando airport all my life, and I’ve never seen it half as crowded as it was this month. I can only guess that people are coming down to Florida because it’s open here. People are taking precautions, sure, but they’re also continuing to live their lives.

We’re having friends over and going to church. We’re going out for dinner and drinks, and supporting local farmers and artisans. We’re celebrating marriages and smiling at strangers. And we’re eating a lot of hashbrown casserole.

Elle Reynolds is an intern at the Federalist, and a senior at Patrick Henry College studying government and journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.

Saturday, December 26, 2020

Newt Gingrich discusses why he is not recognizing Biden as the winner in 2020 presidential election

"My unwillingness to relax and accept that the election was over grew out of a level of outrage and alienation unlike anything I had experienced in more than 60 years involvement in public affairs," Gingrich wrote.

Image
Newt Gingrich
Newt Gingrich
(Photo credit should read ZAKARIA ABDELKAFI/AFP via Getty Images)

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is not recognizing a Joe Biden win in the 2020 presidential election, as he explained in an opinion piece.  

A friend had inquired why this was the case. "As I thought about it, I realized my anger and fear were not narrowly focused on votes," Gingrich wrote. "My unwillingness to relax and accept that the election was over grew out of a level of outrage and alienation unlike anything I had experienced in more than 60 years involvement in public affairs."

In the piece Gingrich brought up various issues: "When Twitter and Facebook censored the oldest and fourth largest newspaper (founded by Alexander Hamilton) because it accurately reported news that could hurt Mr. Biden’s chances — where were The New York Times and The Washington Post?" he wrote.

The former congressman said that officials in key states violated laws: "Officials in virtually every swing state broke their states’ own laws to send out millions of ballots or ballot applications to every registered voter. It was all clearly documented in the Texas lawsuit, which was declined by the U.S. Supreme Court based on Texas’ procedural standing — not the merits of the case."

Gingrich wrote that he does not "have any interest in pretending that the current result is legitimate or honorable. It is simply the final stroke of a four-year establishment-media power grab. It has been perpetrated by people who have broken the law, cheated the country of information, and smeared those of us who believe in America over China, history over revisionism, and the liberal ideal of free expression over cancel culture."

President Trump has not conceded to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential contest.

 https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/newt-gingrich-discusses-why-he-not-recognizing-biden-win-2020

That's a Lot of People Who Think the 2020 Election was Stolen in Some Way

That's a Lot of People Who Think the 2020 Election was Stolen in Some Way

That's a Lot of People Who Think the 2020 Election was Stolen in Some Way

Source: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

The 2020 election is over. Joe Biden came out on top, but allegations of voter fraud remain. We have witness statements, affidavits, and allegations of other funny business that involved the mail-in voting process. There’s a reason why Europe has banned mail-in voting; fraud is likely. At the very least, it presents itself with the opportunity and we all know Democrats would certainly take it. Yet, there was a time issue as well. The legal challenges filed by the Trump campaign and its allies were a total disaster. The courts shot them down. Deadlines have passed. The legal avenue is pretty much over. Still, that doesn’t mean that the feelings of voter fraud and this election being stolen are an extremist position. It’s not. 

A new poll from Rasmussen showed that roughly half the country thinks the election was stolen from Trump in some way. Even with the Trump campaign being unable to successfully argue mass fraud in the courts based on what they thought was solid evidence, half the country still thinks there was fraud (via Rasmussen):

Most voters say this year’s unprecedented level of mail-in voting was largely successful and continue to think President Trump should concede the presidential race. Republicans, however, strongly believe Democrats are likely to have stolen the election.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 57% of Likely U.S. Voters think mail-in voting worked well for the most part. Thirty-nine percent (39%) disagree and say it led to unprecedented voter fraud in this election. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Forty-seven percent (47%) say it’s likely that Democrats stole voters or destroyed pro-Trump ballots in several states to ensure that Joe Biden would win.

[…]

Sixty-two percent (62%) of Republicans say it’s Very Likely the Democrats stole the election, a view shared by 17% of Democrats and 28% of voters not affiliated with either major party.

That’s a sizeable number of Democrats right there. 

I mean, there were a lot of ‘look what fell off the truck’ moments regarding these mail-in ballots during the tallying phase. And some of the breakdowns were shoddy to say the least. Some of these results mirrored returns from elections held in South Korea under Park Chung-hee who was a military dictator. 

On January 6th, Congress will count and verify the results of the Electoral College. There are Republican members in the House and Senate who will challenge the results. We could be in for a show. Will it be successful in overturning the results? No. I mean, there’s a chance, but we’re talking about hitting it big in the Mega Millions lottery-type of a situation here. 

But this should be an animating factor regarding the GOP voter base come midterm season. It’s not going away. Tens of millions are infuriated over the fraud allegations, so the GOP should weaponize that in the same fashion that the Democrats took the Russian collusion insanity to hamstring the Trump administration. Granted, the exception here is that there’s evidence of 2020 funny business. There was nothing to the collusion claims, which were a pure myth. 

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2020/12/22/47-percent-think-2020-election-was-stolen-from-trump-in-some-way-n2582002

Amistad Project Says State Legislators, Not Executive, Need to Certify Presidential Electors

A member of Wisconsin's Electoral College casts their vote for the presidential election at the state Capitol in Madison, Wis, on Dec. 14, 2020. (Morry Gash/Pool/Getty Images)

Amistad Project Says State Legislators, Not Executive, Need to Certify Presidential Electors

A group has brought a lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to block the counting of electoral college votes from several contested states when Congress meets in a joint session on Jan. 6.

The Amistad Project filed the lawsuit arguing that the state legislatures of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona were prevented from exercising their power under the U.S. Constitution to certify the presidential electors’ votes cast on Dec. 14. The group claims that a number of federal and state laws had unconstitutionally delegated the authority of state legislatures to certify these votes to state executive branches.

Under Article II of the U.S. Constitution, presidential electors must be appointed by each state in the manner prescribed by the state’s legislature.

The group argues that the provision prevents state legislatures delegating their power to state executive branch officials as a ministerial duty.

“There are textual and structural arguments for these state statutes being unconstitutional,” the group wrote in their lawsuit. They argue that the state laws are an “unconstitutional delegation of the state legislative prerogatives of post-election certifications of Presidential votes and of Presidential electors.”

The lawsuit also argues that state legislatures, many of which are adjourned until January 2021, are also prevented to meet to perform their post-election certification duty. In order to conduct a special legislative session, a supermajority or a governor must agree that legislators should meet. However, the group said the governors from these states are preventing the state legislatures from doing so.

“The very body that is responsible for how these electors are selected, can’t even meet after the election, up through January. So that’s unconstitutional, in that it’s a delegation of authority to a governor of a legislative function. That is not allowed,” Phill Kline, Director of the Amistad Project, told The Epoch Times’ American Thought Leaders.

He added that state officials of some blue states have also been hostile to state legislators. He said the Michigan attorney general, Dana Nessel, had considered criminal investigations and prosecutions for legislators “who didn’t agree with her on the election result.”

“That’s stunning to me. That type of intimidation and threat should never happen in America, from the state or chief law enforcement officer,” Kline, who was the former attorney general in Kansas, said.

The defendants in the lawsuit include Vice President Mike Pence, Congress, and officials from the five battleground states. It was filed on behalf of voter rights organizations and voters from the five states.

The lawsuit seeks to declare sections of federal and state laws that delegate the post-election certification power to state executives as unconstitutional. It also asks the court to prevent Pence, who will be counting the electoral college votes, and Congress from counting votes from ArizonaGeorgiaMichiganPennsylvania, and Wisconsin until their state legislatures are able to meet to certify the votes.

“Based on this legal background, Plaintiffs claim, under the Article II, that if there is no state legislative post-election certifications of Presidential votes and of Presidential electors in the Defendant States, then those Defendant States’ Presidential electors votes, not so certified, cannot be counted by the federal Defendants for President and Vice President under Article II,” the lawsuit states.

This lawsuit comes as Republican lawmakers are weighing whether to launch a challenge to electoral college votes in contested states on Jan. 6.

Several House members have vowed to launch challenges to prevent Congress from counting the slate of electoral votes for Democratic nominee Joe Biden in several contested states.

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) initiated the push when he announced his intention to object to the electoral votes come January. Since then, a growing number of Republican lawmakers have expressed their intention to object to the electoral votes during that session.

So far, there have been no senators who have publicly committed to challenging a state’s results. A handful of Republican senators haven’t ruled out the possibility of objecting but have said that they would first monitor the developments regarding claims of voter fraud. Meanwhile, Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville (R.-Ala) has suggested that he may join the planned objection by members of the House of Representatives.

The case is cited as Wisconsin Voters Alliance v. Pence (1:20-cv-03791).

Jan Jekielek contributed to this report.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/amistad-project-says-state-legislators-not-executive-need-to-certify-presidential-electors_3629806.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-12-23-1

Friday, December 25, 2020

Trump Urges Americans to ‘Stop the Theft of the Presidential Election’

President Donald Trump in a video address on Dec. 23, 2020. (White House video screenshot)

Trump Urges Americans to ‘Stop the Theft of the Presidential Election’

President Donald Trump in a message to the nation late Tuesday sought to explain why he is determined to pursue all legal and constitutional avenues to “stop the theft of the presidential election,” and called on the American people to “raise their voices” and demand to correct the injustice.

“Americans must be able to have complete faith in the confidence of their elections. The fate of our democracy depends upon it,” he said in a video statement. “Now is the time for the American people to raise their voices and demand that this injustice be immediately corrected. Our elections must be fair, they must be honest, they must be transparent, and they must be 100 percent free of fraud.

“We won this election by a magnificent landslide, and the people of the United States know it. All over, they’re demonstrating, they’re angry, they’re fearful. We cannot allow a completely fraudulent election to stand.”

Trump said that one of his most solemn duties as president is to protect the integrity of Americans’ “sacred right to vote.”

He accused Democratic officials in key swing states of having used the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes the disease COVID-19, as a pretext to allegedly illegally violate state laws to “to enable, encourage, and facilitate fraud” on an unprecedented scale in the country.

Trump has previously alleged that there was widespread voting irregularity and fraud across the nation, however this is the first time he has made a lengthy address about the election urging Americans to be vocal about the situation.

It comes after he recently called for his supporters to join a planned protest in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021. “Be there, will be wild!” the president wrote. Jan. 6 is when members of Congress are set to convene in a joint session to count electoral votes.

Pro-Trump Supporters Hold "Stop The Steal" Protest In Atlanta, As State's Recount Nears End
Pro-President Donald Trump protesters rally against the results of the presidential election outside the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta, Ga., on Nov. 18, 2020. (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)

Hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters have held multiple protests across the nation since the election, calling for a free and fair election and for leaders to take action.

Democrat Joe Biden has declared victory in the election. Trump and other Republicans are contesting election results in courts in key states. The Epoch Times is not calling the race at this time.

‘Facts Every American Needs to Know’

The president spent the majority of his White House address Tuesday night explaining why he believes there was widespread fraud while repeatedly asserting that he was the true winner of the election.

“The truth is we won the election by a landslide. We won it big,” Trump said. “Today I’m going to give you the facts that every American needs to know.”

On the night of Nov. 3, swing states including Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Pennsylvania saw a lead for Trump. However, vote counting stopped abruptly in the early hours of the next day and a series of “massive and statistically inconceivable vote dumps” in the middle of the night overturned the results, Trump noted.

“These gigantically ridiculous one-sided spikes were miraculously just enough to push Joe Biden into the lead in all of the key swing states. These glaring anomalies are just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.

The president also shared how he had won Ohio, Florida, and Iowa “by historic margins,” and won 18 of 19 “bellwether counties” that have for the past 40 years correctly predicted the winner of the presidential election.

“[This means] Biden would be the first candidate since 1960 and only the second candidate in American history to win the White House while losing all three of those major states, and it wasn’t even close,” Trump said.

He pointed out that Democrats had lost 25 out of 46 toss-up House seats, and noted that Democrats ended up having a net loss of 14 seats even though they were projected to gain 15 seats, which was, according to Trump, due to his  success and the down-ballot effect.

Trump said that his presidential campaign earned about 75 million votes, which is about 12 million more votes compared to the 2016 election—the largest vote increase recorded for an incumbent president. Despite this, opponent Joe Biden “somehow received 11.7 million more votes than Barack Obama, and he beat Barack Obama all over the country,” Trump said.

“It is historically, mathematically, politically, and logically impossible. It did not happen. He did not win. We won by a landslide.” he said.

The Trump campaign has over the past seven weeks provided evidence alleging voting irregularities and fraud. The president told Americans that the campaign has shown that Democrats violated their own state laws by changing procedures ahead of the election without having gone through the state legislatures.

Such changes included suspending all signature verification requirements, flooding a given state with absentee ballot applications, and deploying hundreds of unmanned ballot drop boxes. These changes were allegedly done to “illegally benefit” Biden, Trump said.

He also alleged that the incredibly low absentee ballot rejection rates “prove that hundreds of thousands of illegitimate ballots were counted in the key states,” and that there were no “meaningful attempt to verify citizenship, residency, identity, or eligibility for mail-in ballots.”

“The potential for illegal activity is unlimited and that’s what we just experienced,” he said.

Trump also pointed to witnesses who have testified that they personally witnessed different instances of cheating and fraud. This included witnesses having seen poll workers backdating thousands of ballots and counting batches of the same ballots many times. Other witnesses said they saw thousands of pristine ballots that had no creases or folds and that were all for Biden.

dominion
The building housing the Toronto office of Dominion Voting Systems. (The Epoch Times)

The president also questioned the involvement of Dominion Voting Systems, a supplier of voting hardware and software, including voting machines and tabulators. He said that Arizona state senators recently issued a subpoena for a forensic audit of the voting machines, and that other states using Dominion’s equipment and software should also carry out similar investigations.

“As I have just laid out, we have unveiled overwhelming evidence of election fraud. None of this should ever have been allowed in the United States of America. It is a travesty of democracy, it’s a shame upon our republic,” Trump said.

Trump also accused the Democrat Party, the media, and Big Tech giants of “openly colluding” to deceive the country. Prior to the election, media and Big Tech companies censored stories about how Biden’s family had “received millions of dollars from the Chinese Communist Party.”

“Our country no longer has a free press. It is a press of suppression. It is a press where the truth will never come out. It is the greatest and most shocking scandal involving a presidential candidate in modern history,” Trump said, later adding, “The media and the Democrat Party lied to the American people to try to steal the election.”

“If this egregious fraud is not fully investigated and addressed, the 2020 election will forever be regarded as illegitimate and the most corrupt election in the history of our country,” Trump said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-urges-americans-to-stop-the-theft-of-the-presidential-election_3629965.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-12-23-1