Seven Republican senators voted Tuesday to confirm the latest Democratic judge to a 15-year term on the D.C. Superior Court. That might not be surprising on a normal day, but this judicial nomination was the first chance Republicans had to show even a limp semblance of resistance to Democratic lawfare after the country was plunged into a constitutional crisis by Donald Trump’s kangaroo court conviction.
Some of the seven Republicans who lent a hand to the Biden administration are the usual suspects, like Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and Mitt Romney (R-Utah). Another, Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), plays a conservative on TV but is a reliable vote for President Joe Biden’s judicial agenda. The final three — Tom Tillis (R-N.C.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), and Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) — have no excuse.
Republicans continue to support their own prosecution. It would be shocking, were it not so believable.
Here’s the crazy part: Amid the former president’s persecution, these seven Republicans gave a stamp of approval to the Democrats’ judicial agenda because they
wanted to. Democrats didn’t even need the votes to confirm.
Since Trump’s conviction last week, Republicans have been paralyzed on what to do (if anything). Even those committed to action worry their power is limited and are afraid of overpromising and under-delivering, and thus far, no Republican senators have shown an appetite for the kind of parliamentary procedures necessary to grind day-to-day business to a halt.
In the action club, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) became the 11th Republican to sign a letter committing to voting against non-defense nominees and blocking increases in spending, but they’ll need broader conference support to impact the spending agenda and truly wreak havoc on business as usual.
To add to the frustration, it’s been fair game for more than half a century for the opposition party to try to block the White House’s judicial nominees during a presidential election year. Nicknamed the Thurmond Rule, the practice goes back to 1968. Even the low, low bar of not cooperating on judicial nominations and blocking spending increases is too high for Republican leadership, however, with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) signaling his opposition.
Meanwhile, the Democrats march on. On Tuesday, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul indicted former Republican lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Jim Troupis, along with Republican political operative Mike Roman, for “forgery” over their efforts to contest the 2020 election.
Reading the corporate media, you might be tempted to think the three men donned fake mustaches, dark sunglasses, and black fedoras to try to trick Congress into picking Trump as the winner. The reality is they worked on putting together a different slate of electors to vote should their lawsuit contesting the Wisconsin election succeed.
Democrats have accused them of organizing “fake electors” — and the phrase is plastered all over corporate media stories. The term, however, is made up. Before Democrats started prosecuting Republicans, the preferred phrase was “alternate slate of electors.” John F. Kennedy used the legal tactic successfully in 1960 by to contest Hawaii. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens
referenced it in his 2000 dissent in Bush v. Gore. More recently, Democratic commentator Van Jones and Harvard Law professor Larry Lessig discussed it in their CNN op-ed, explaining how Democrats could legally contest the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania.
That doesn’t mean the strategy was the best; it simply means it wasn’t remotely beyond the pale. Now, it’s a crime, and just as the ridiculous phrase “pre-planned” saturated media coverage as Democratic reporters sought to explain away the Benghazi attack, “fake electors” is the it-phrase to describe anyone who worked to contest the 2020 election.
And questions are the new red line. “Donald Trump is threatening our democracy,” Biden tweeted last week. “First, he questioned our election system. Then, he questioned our judicial system.”
While some Democratic state officials continue to try to kick Trump off the ballot and other Democratic state officials continue to prosecute Republican operatives, D.C. Republicans continue to support their own prosecution. It would be shocking, were it not so believable.
Blaze Media’s Steve Deace:We’ve got a big problem in Wisconsin
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IN OTHER NEWS
White House attempts to sabotage bipartisan ICC sanctions
The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed sanctions on the International Criminal Court, 247-155, with 42 Democrats bucking Biden’s attempt to squash it.
Party leaders spent the weekend negotiating the sanctions, brought in response to the ICC’s arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with Democratic Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and House Foreign Affairs Ranking Member Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) taking the lead for Democrats.
Democratic leaders withdrew from talks after the White House came out against the sanctions, criticizing them as overly broad, but saw defections from dozens of their members.
The fire rises: Blaze News: United Methodist Church loses more than 1 million members in single day when group takes stand for ‘God and His word’
Mainline Protestantism is in crisis. For decades, many of its leaders have traded old-fashioned Christianity for popular, left-wing appeal — while congregants have fled. Increasingly, the Global South has taken the lead in fighting back. The United Methodist Church is just the latest to suffer mass defections after embracing the LGBT agenda. Blaze News’ Chris Enloe reports:
Weeks after the United Methodist Church voted to allow LGBT-practicing clergy and reverse prohibitions on same-sex marriage, the United Methodist Church of Ivory Coast… voted on May 28 to leave the UMC.
The West African Methodists made the decision to leave the UMC “for reasons of conscience, before God and His word, the supreme authority in matters of faith and life.” The decision of the UMC to embrace LGBT culture and same-sex marriages “deviates from the Holy Scriptures,” according to the EMUCI. The UMC church is, therefore, “sacrific[ing] its honor and integrity to honor the LGBTQ community.”
…Over the last several years, thousands of UMC congregations in the U.S. have disaffiliated from the UMC, joining the Global Methodist Church or remaining independent. They left over the denomination’s liberal drift.
The Korean Methodist Church — which boasts approximately 1.5 million members — could soon also be on its way out of the UMC.