DL Open Thread: Friday, December 29, 2023
The Maine Course. Trump off Maine ballot–for now. Either the Constitution means something, or it doesn’t. El Supremos will decide:
“I do not reach this conclusion lightly,” said Bellows, a Democrat, in the decision. “I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.”
Both the Maine and Colorado decision are based on section 3 of the 14th amendment, which bans from office those who “engaged in insurrection”. The provision, which came after the civil war, was intended to prevent Confederates from retaking power.
Legal scholars have argued that the clause should apply to Trump because of his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and obstruct the peaceful transfer of power. The clause has rarely been used and has not previously been tested on the office of the presidency.
FWIW (aka “what you’re paying to read this”), I think Michigan will also bar Trump. The Michigan court only permitted his name to be on the primary ballot b/c the primaries are conducted by the political parties, not the state.
Trump Team Flew Fake Electors’ Ballots To DC. Because they were stuck in the DeJoy-created post office quagmire:
Two days before the January 6 insurrection, the Trump campaign’s plan to use fake electors to block President-elect Joe Biden from taking office faced a potentially crippling hiccup: The fake elector certificates from two critical battleground states were stuck in the mail.
So, Trump campaign operatives scrambled to fly copies of the phony certificates from Michigan and Wisconsin to the nation’s capital, relying on a haphazard chain of couriers, as well as help from two Republicans in Congress, to try to get the documents to then-Vice President Mike Pence while he presided over the Electoral College certification.
These details largely come from pro-Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who was an architect of the fake electors plot and is now a key cooperator in several state probes into the scheme. Chesebro pleaded guilty in October to a felony conspiracy charge in Georgia in connection with the electors’ plan, and has met with prosecutors in Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, who are investigating the sham GOP electors in their own states.
The rush to get the fake electors’ ballots to Pence has Keystone Kops’ levels of absurdity. Would kinda be funny if we weren’t talking about stealing the election. A good read.
Nikki Haley ‘Blowed Herself Up REAL Good’. Guess she must have been edjimicated in South Carolina schools:
But Ms. Haley’s political gaffe on Wednesday night, when the presidential hopeful and former governor of South Carolina stumbled through the causes of the Civil War with no mention of slavery, may make that appeal considerably harder just as she is edging closer to striking distance of Mr. Trump in New Hampshire.
Ms. Haley on Thursday walked back her answer about the causes of the Civil War, telling a New Hampshire interviewer, “Of course the Civil War was about slavery.”
Her retreat came about 12 hours after a town-hall meeting in Berlin, N.H., a state that is central to her presidential ambitions, where she was asked about the Civil War’s origins. Her answer focused on government overreach and “the freedoms of what people could and couldn’t do,” after she jokingly told the questioner he had posed a tough one. He then noted that she had not uttered the word “slavery.”
Might I also point out that the NYTimes lede for the story was about Democratic donors? Weak, very weak.
Ms. Haley did not help that cause this week. Speaking on the radio show “The Pulse of New Hampshire” on Thursday morning, Ms. Haley, who famously removed the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the South Carolina Capitol in Columbia, tried to make amends: “Yes, I know it was about slavery. I am from the South.”
But she also insinuated that the question had come not from a Republican voter but from a political detractor, accusing Mr. Biden and Democrats of “sending plants” to her town-hall events.
“Why are they hitting me? See this for what it is,” she said, adding, “They want to run against Trump.”
Were Haley a caffeinated beverage, Tom Waits would say, “Coffee wasn’t strong enough to defend itself.”
Yet Another Parental Rights Warrior Sets Yet Another Good Example. A former Rethug candidate for Lt. Governor at that:
A former GOP candidate for Pennsylvania lieutenant governor and leader of a political action committee that fueled conservative opposition to school boards has been charged with assault after allegedly punching a teenager at a boozy birthday party she threw for her 17-year-old daughter.
Multiple teenagers were assaulted by intoxicated adults during the Sept. 29 party at Clarice Schillinger’s Doylestown home, according to a police affidavit. Police say that Schillinger’s intoxicated boyfriend punched one teen in the face and assaulted another. That teen also was punched in the eye by Schillinger’s intoxicated mother, who also chased that teen around the kitchen, the affidavit said.
As teenagers tried to leave the home on Liz Circle, Schillinger — who police said had supplied the more than 15 minors at the party with a basement bar stocked with vodka and rum, played beer pong with them and encouraged them to take shots with her — ordered them to stay.
She then punched one young man in the face three times, according to the affidavit, which said video footage showed Schillinger lunging toward a group of teenagers in the foyer and having to be restrained.
Any surprise that this floozy was wined and dined by the Rethuglican elite?:
Schillinger, 36, rose to prominence amid a burgeoning conservative movement opposed to pandemic safety measures, which has since shifted to accusing the public education system of indoctrinating students with liberal ideals.
She was tapped by Bucks County venture capitalist Paul Martino in 2021 to lead a political action committee, Back to School PA, that poured more than $500,000 of Martino’s money into school board races. While the PAC billed itself as bipartisan, most candidates who received its donations were Republicans, at a time when conservatives were marshaling opposition to public schools over so-called critical race theory.
Schillinger then became executive director of a federal PAC started by Martino, Back to School USA, which pledged to combat “liberal teachers’ unions and special interest groups that are responsible for indoctrinating our children.
Insert your own punchline here.
What do you want to talk about?
Reading the New York Times for its political coverage is like buying Playboy for the articles.