27 October 20
Lacking for October: Larger Donors
So far for October, larger donations, even those of one hundred dollars or more, have been scarce. The volume of donations is actually up, but the dollar figures are down.
Not everyone can make a larger donation. But it would really help.
For your consideration, respectfully.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
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27 October 20
It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News
FOCUS: Charles Pierce | Brett Kavanaugh Just Threatened to Unleash a Zombie Bush v. Gore
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "And, on the 27th day, the Eighth Commandment takes a standing eight-count."
The oath that I have solemnly taken tonight means at its core that I will do my job without any fear or favor, and that I will do so independently of both the political branches and of my own preferences.
Thus did the railroad finally reach its over-determined terminus, and thus did Judge Amy Coney Barrett become Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett of the United States Supreme Court. She will assume her new post immediately and, as evil luck would have it, even as she was being sworn in, her conservative brethren were setting the table nicely for her off the election-law portion of the menu. From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
The court's 5-3 ruling means that absentee ballots will be counted only if they are in the hands of municipal clerks by the time polls close on Nov. 3. The justices determined the courts shouldn't be the ones to decide the election rules amid the coronavirus pandemic that is surging in Wisconsin and across the world.
But the real main course came from Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who, as we know, likes beer. A number of legal-beagles already have pointed this out, but Kavanaugh's concurrence is completely bizarre.
For important reasons, most States, including Wisconsin, require absentee ballots to be received by election day, not just mailed by election day. Those States want to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election. And those States also want to be able to definitively announce the results of the election on election night, or as soon as possible thereafter. Moreover, particularly in a Presidential election, counting all the votes quickly can help the State promptly resolve any disputes, address any need for recounts, and begin the process of canvassing and certifying the election results in an expeditious manner.
In other words, if you mail in your ballot the week before the election, and the mailman falls into the Fox River, and his body (and the mail) are not discovered until after Election Day, you are SOL, citizen. Kavanaugh is ruling based on hypothetical chaos, and he's putting in place the judicial framework to back up a White House declaration of victory based on where things stand at 12:01 a.m. on November 4. And just to put a cherry on top, he cited...wait for it...Bush v. Gore as the basis for his argument. And not just BvG, but Chief Justice William Rehnquist's terminally weird concurrence that even his fellow justices held at arm's length. Rehnquist argued that state courts could not expand voting rights in their own state borders because that power lay completely with the state legislatures. Justice Neil Gorsuch ominously joined Kavanaugh in supporting this radical theory that most judges wish everyone had forgotten about.
In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan suggested that Kavanaugh would do well to return to actual reality.
On the scales of both constitutional justice and electoral accuracy, protecting the right to vote in a health crisis outweighs conforming to a deadline created in safer days...And what will undermine the ‘integrity’ of that process is not the counting but instead the discarding of timely cast ballots that, because of pandemic conditions, arrive a bit after Election Day.
Such is the state of play a week before the most important national election since 1860. The table is set, and I wouldn't trust its newest guest as far as I can throw Mike Pence's immune system.
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