Trump, or extinction by irrelevance?
Update: The Supreme Court declined to hear the Texas suit late Friday afternoon.
The state of Texas has filed suit against four states where the presidential election results are in dispute: Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. The Constitution gives the Supreme Court original jurisdiction for suits between states (Article III, Section 2). The court ordered the four states to submit their responses yesterday. A number of states have filed amicus, or friend of the court, briefs both in support of and in opposition to Texas.
Suppose the court either refuses to take the case or it rules against Texas. Suppose also that the Democrats win the two contested Georgia Senate races January 5. With the apparent cheating demonstrated in the presidential election and Georgia’s RINO governor and secretary of state, nobody should assume the runoffs will be fair or that challenges to an unfair election will have any chance of success.
Biden would be president and Democrats would control the House of Representatives and the Senate (it would be 50-50, but vice president Harris would break ties). They could and probably would carry out their plans to expand the Supreme Court and “pack” it with a unstoppable liberal majority. In either refusing to hear the Texas suit or accepting the suit but ruling against Texas, the Supreme Court’s five conservative justices will have contributed to their own demises as consequential jurists—collective judicial suicide.
On the other hand, the court could take the case and rule in favor of Texas. It helps that Texas has a strong legal case. Article I, Section 4 states: The Times, Places, and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be proscribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress at any time may at any time by Law make or alter such regulations, except to the Places of chusing Senators. This clause apparently has been extended to presidential elections, which are held concurrently with Congressional elections.
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What this means is the state legislatures have exclusive control of how elections for senators, representatives, and the president are held within their state. Robert Madsen at AmericanThinker.com has done a good job of summarizing how the four states violated the procedures their legislatures enacted in those states’ own election laws (“A Summary of the Texas Election Lawsuit,” December 10, 2020), and how those violations could have changed the outcome. Many of the violations are changes in procedures implemented before the election by state secretary of states or other officials. Covid-19 has been the usual rationale. Some of the violations stem from the alleged vote counting shenanigans on the night of November 3 and the morning of November 4.
The two-fold Constitutional argument is straightforward. Changes by any person or entity other than the states’ legislatures are unconstitutional violations of Article I, Section 4. Furthermore, as Texas argues, they treat the citizens of Texas and other states who played by their own rules differently, and unequally, from the four swing states that violated their own rules. This is a violation of the Equal Protection clause in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment.
These arguments give the court’s judicial conservatives ample reason to rule for Texas. The ruling would comport with the plain language of the Constitution—always important to judicial conservatives and Constitutional literalists—and established precedent concerning legislative control of the time, manner, and place of presidential elections. The Covid-19 rationale is weak and Justice Gorsuch recently poured water on it in a concurring opinion invalidating New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Covid-19 restrictions shutting down religious institutions.
Government is not free to disregard the First Amendment in times of crisis.
***
It is time—past time—to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues and mosques.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, Concurring opinion, Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo
It looks like Gorsuch will vote to hear the Texas case and then, if the case is heard, rule for Texas. The question is will the other four conservative justices join him? (Chief Justice Roberts is an emasculated weenie who may or may not join.) They can decline to hear the case or hear it but then rule against Texas. However, they’d run the risks that a potentially rigged Georgia run-off election puts two more Democrats in the Senate and makes that body effectively Democrat-controlled, Democrats then pack the Supreme Court with an unstoppable liberal majority, and the conservatives spend their careers writing irrelevant dissents. That would be an especially ugly prospect for the court’s younger conservatives, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett.
Or they can rule for Texas, keep themselves relevant, and have an opportunity to shape Constitutional law and the course of the United States for many decades.
A win for Texas throws selection of electors for the electoral college into the the four states’ legislatures, which are all controlled by Republicans, presumably handing the election to Trump. Even if the Republicans lost both Georgia Senate seats, Trump would stop any court-packing scheme. On a non-judicial note, the conservative justices can’t be too happy with Democrat and leftist “initiatives” the last four years: Russiagate, the impeachment, Covid-19 totalitarianism, this summer’s riots, and the election shenanigans. So they have a choice: Trump, or risk their own extinction. The first choice looks like the better bet, although one never knows how deeply corruption and cowardice runs in the nation’s capital.
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 
Good analysis, Robert. linking as usual @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/
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“…Trump, or risk their own extinction.”
I agree completely, and it is reinforcing to know that the staff Lawyer at SLL wrote the article. I can’t think of a more deserved fate to vote for one’s in situ living extinction.
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And if those Republicans in those 4 states puss out and let the crap stand??
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we are on our own. but we always were.
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The answer = Supreme Court rejects Texas 2020 election case.
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You have your answer now.
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Yup.
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It will be weapons free and no bag limit on communists. Like our forefathers, it will be up to us. Don’t worry about fedgov. The Army War College gamed different scenarios of civil war. In each case the federal government collapsed completely.
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expect DC after Biden ===> spicy to ask for and receive foreign troops to help “maintain order” and “safeguard America’s nuclear arsenal” and “guard vital infrastructure” and “ensure democracy”. This will absolutely certainly happen if states start serious secession talks.
Change my mind.
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I appreciated how your article with sound reasoning, presented a good case for the judges siding with Texas; only to see the SCOTUS not even hear the case. Bummer.
With the he evidence clearly presented of many criminal acts and every court of the land too fearful of considering a ruling, we have officially been relegated to a third world banana republic status.
The question is then, where do we go from here?
Is there even a point to fight for? What can we offer to replace such a corrupted, fallen government? Do we respond with violence to try to get a jump on the criminals, who will be checking their lists for our names, to be disappeared?
I’m really looking forward to your next article.
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I have a peculiar habit of trying to think before I speak or write, so give me a few days. However, there will most assuredly be a new article.
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I’m guessing you have a problem with assassinating the enemies in this country for one reason or another.. Maybe after your family is whored and killed by the communist democrat soldiers you might rethink your position and start to execute problem in your AO… Just a thought.. Good luck..
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How many have you killed this morning?
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“Is there even a point to fight for?”
How about “avoiding being permanently impoverished and sent to a gulag”?
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I’m thinking we all need to consider your peculiar habit, thanks for getting back to me.
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Your sociopathic president was cheated out of the election?
How so?
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Hey, Peter Harris – F*** the F*** Off.
I signed up today just to say that.
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So typical of those on the far right.
Not a scintilla of intelligence to make any cogent argument, let alone a primary school reply.
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Res ipsa loquitur, Mr. Harris. The facts speak for themselves. It was a fraudulent election. Your soon-to-be senile, pedophile hero president will try to give you and your ilk everything your Marxist, Abortionist hearts desire.
There is one fly in the ointment, however. Then man you love to hate is still POTUS and could invoke the Insurrection Act. Read and heed the fine print. I hope you know how to defend yourself.
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Your use of Latin is not fooling anybody.
Just like others here, you just rant and rave incoherent and disconnected nonsense.
Those like yourself on the far right, seem to use the same template. Appeal to emotion 100% of the time, and supply zero facts to support your emotional outburst.
Then you promptly move on to crazy ad hominems and non-sequiturs, because you think that’s the best way to defeat your debating opponent.
Then you finish off with a some mad, specious and esoteric nonsense.
“Res ipsa loquitur”
Where… can you provide just one?
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“No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot.” – Mark Twain
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Ha haha…
That Mark Twain quote has been proven to be false and has been debunked.
And the irony is, even if it was true, you, yourself don’t provide any evidence for your claims.
The ignorance on the far-right is layered like onions.
If you manage to peel back one layer, you are confronted with more layers.
“The blindest people think
they can see the most”
― Dahi Tamara.
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The Left does it fair share of ranting — https://s2.qwant.com/thumbr/0x0/c/0/05d0257bf1dbef5cf71ad0d64967fe9ae940771b927771a68c335a52be8fc2/bizarre-moment-trump-demonstrator-screams-no-at-top-of-her-lungsa-00_00_16_20-still013.jpg?u=http%3A%2F%2Fronpaulinstitute.org%2Fmedia%2F121146%2Fbizarre-moment-trump-demonstrator-screams-no-at-top-of-her-lungsa-00_00_16_20-still013.jpg&q=0&b=1&p=0&a=1 — The specialty seems to do so skyward.
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There will be bloodshed because most on the left have never experienced the real world. Once they do, they will run from it.
I expect a short period of extreme violence, followed by the Balkanization of the whole country, or Succession by a few states.
Either scenario will be a disaster for us on the global stage.
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Well Robert,
SCOTUS gave their answer last night which was a shiv to the kidneys. 240yo Vellum going cheap these days. So what is Plan F, Sir??
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Do not dismiss the possibility of SCOTUS going rogue for this decision, in order to throw the coyotes off the scent..only to rule on a much larger decision later. ART of War?
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A State dispute with original jurisdiction at SCOTUS is as big as it gets. There is no bigger.
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Do not dismiss the possibility of SCOTUS going rogue on this decision, to throw the coyotes off the scent..only to rule later and ethically, Constitutionally in a much larger, critical decision…The ART of WAR?
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