Tag Archives: SCOTUS

SCOTUS delivers the KO

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am worn out, bushed, whipped, exhausted by all this legal wrangling, which means I am delighted beyond belief that the U.S. Supreme Court has put an end to Donald Trump’s challenge of a free and fair presidential election.

Oh, wait. I should mention that Trump lost that election. President-elect Joe Biden will take office in about 39 days.

SCOTUS rejected a specious lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that sought to get four states to throw out their election returns that went favorably toward Biden. The high court, in a brief summary statement, said that Texas could not interfere in other states’ electoral process.

Ba da boom!

More to the point, the court ruling stated  that Texas lacked standing to pursue the case, saying it “has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections.”

This is the end of the road for Donald Trump, for his Trumpkin toadies, his cult of personality followers.

The lesson once again comes in the form of the strongly conservative court ruling with dispassionate analysis what almost every legal scholar in the land had predicted it would rule.

My advice now for Donald Trump: Shut the hell up about an election you lost; accept the results … and go away.

Good news and better news

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

There might be some good news and even better news to come from the U.S. Supreme Court.

The good news would be that the court will declare that a profoundly stupid and senseless lawsuit will not get a hearing; that the court will dismiss it summarily.

The lawsuit comes from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the state’s indicted top lawyer, who is suing to have the presidential vote results in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania tossed out because, Paxton alleges, they were cast illegally. Seventeen state attorneys general — all Republicans (imagine that) — have joined Paxton’s idiotic legal maneuver.

The better news would be that all nine justices lock arms and declare in a stern rebuke of Donald Trump’s attempt to undermine, subvert and destroy the democratic electoral process. Chief Justice John Roberts can issue the order to fire off the rhetorical barrage. My hope is that the chief does so.

Donald John Trump needs to be exposed as the fraud that he is and the nation’s highest court can lend its voice to that important message by telling us why it is tossing his baseless, phony complaint about “widespread voter fraud” into the trash can … where it belongs!

Sanity must prevail … or else

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am a firm believer in judicial sanity, which is to say that sane minds are likely to prevail in the face of insane legal challenges.

Thus, we have a U.S. Supreme Court roster of justices who will get to decide whether a lawsuit brought forward by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has merit and is worth hearing.

Judicial sanity would seem to dictate that this is a slam dunk for the nation’s highest court. It should toss the matter aside. My hope for the sake of judicial sanity prevailing is that it does so with a terse statement that says in effect: Texas has no standing to bring this case to this court.

Paxton, who appears to be a lousy lawyer, wants the SCOTUS to overturn the results of four states that voted Nov. 3 for President-elect Joe Biden. From the get-go my question has been this: How in the name of election meddling can one state purport to intervene in the electoral affairs of another state? 

Therein might lie the case for judicial sanity presenting itself. The high court should tell AG Paxton to mind his own bee’s wax and butt the hell out. He cannot bring a lawsuit against four states that all have certified the results of their presidential balloting results.

I would say that sanity is a sure thing to prevail, except for this: 17 states’ attorneys general have joined Paxton’s clown show and signed on as intervenors in this idiotic lawsuit. All the AGs have swilled the Donald Trump Kool-Aid and are seeking — and this is as rich as it gets — to overturn the legitimate electoral results of a free and fair election.

I believe in the U.S. Constitution. I believe in the power of reason. I continue to believe that judicial sanity is going to have the final say on this profoundly un-American legal challenge.

Paxton seeks to bask in some perverse glory

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have concluded, based on zero hard data and only on my inherent bias that I admit to freely, that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is hellbent on making a spectacle of himself.

He seeks to bask in some sort of perverse glory derived from Donald Trump’s idiotic pursuit of “widespread voter fraud” where none exists. Thus, Paxton has filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Supreme Court that seeks to overturn the free and fair election results in four states that cast most of their votes for President-elect Joe Biden in the just completed presidential election.

Paxton’s alleged “logic” is beyond belief.

He says the four states — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia — changed their voting rules in an unconstitutional fashion by allowing more voters to cast their ballots using the U.S. Postal Service. He wants the high court, therefore, to toss out those states’ election returns.

To its credit, the SCOTUS — with three justices nominated by Donald Trump already aboard — has declared already that another lawsuit brought by a Pennsylvania GOP member of Congress has no merit; it has tossed it aside with a single-sentence ruling.

So what the hell is Paxton trying to do here? I mean, the dude already is in trouble already. He is awaiting trial in Texas courts for securities fraud allegations. He also is being investigated by the FBI for allegedly doing favors illegally for a campaign donor. Seven key legal aides have quit or been fired by the AG after they blew the whistle on what they allege is illegal conduct.

The word on Paxton is that he was a mediocre lawyer prior to his election to the Texas Legislature, where he didn’t distinguish himself as the author of much key legislation. Then he got elected Texas AG in 2014 and was almost immediately showered with suspicion when a Collin County grand jury indicted him for securities fraud.

Now this? The AG must have a screw loose.

Let me be as clear as possible: Joe Biden won the election; there is no evidence of the kind of “widespread” fraud that Trump and his Trumpster Team allege. Even the U.S. attorney general, William Barr, has reached that conclusion.

Ken Paxton needs to stop meddling in other states’ affairs.

‘Yes’ on lifetime appointments!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Let’s shout out a cheer for the U.S. Supreme Court and the Constitution that allows its justices to receive lifetime appointments as part of the federal judicial branch of government.

The court has tossed out with little comment yet another frivolous lawsuit that sought to get the Pennsylvania legislature to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The suit, brought by Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, wants to hand Pennsylvania’s electoral votes to Donald Trump instead of Joe Biden, who won them in a free and fair election on Nov. 3.

What is so gratifying is that the high court ruled unanimously against the complaint brought by the Trumpkin Kelly. That means Trump’s three appointees — Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — ruled against The Donald.

Hey, this is a big deal. Why? Because Trump declared it essential to have a nine-member court seated to enable him to win a close call in any complaint brought to challenge the results of the election.

Well, it wasn’t a close call. The justices, all of them, saw fit to toss this latest complaint onto the scrap heap where it belongs.

Yes, the nation’s founders had the right idea when they established a judiciary that should be as free as possible from political pressure.

Texas AG files ridiculous lawsuit

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Texas, we have an attorney general who is now showing the extent to which he is willing to engage in cheap publicity stunts and it’s going to cost us all a pretty penny to boot!

Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the presidential election results in four states: Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. They were states that President-elect Joe Biden won over Donald J. Trump.

The basis of Paxton’s lawsuit is as idiotic as the complaints that Trump has pursued in all those states: Paxton contends there was widespread voter fraud that resulted in Biden’s election as president.

Oh, let me add: Paxton doesn’t provide a shred of evidence of such voter fraud in his filing with the U.S. Supreme Court. Indeed, judges in all those states have dismissed summarily complaints that the Trump campaign has filed. What’s more, they have counted the ballots three times in Georgia, with the result remaining the same: Joe Biden won the state’s 16 electoral votes.

Good grief, man. Paxton already is under investigation himself for allegations of criminal activity brought to light by whistleblowers who used to work in his office. They have all left the AG’s office, either by dismissal or resignation.

Now we have the AG engaging in a patently stupid attempt to meddle in other states’ electoral business.

The Texas Tribune reports:

In a filing to the high court Tuesday, Paxton claims the four battleground states broke the law by instituting pandemic-related changes to election policies, whether “through executive fiat or friendly lawsuits, thereby weakening ballot integrity.”

Paxton claimed that these changes allowed for voter fraud to occur — a conclusion experts and election officials have rejected — and said the court should push back a Dec. 14 deadline by which states must appoint their presidential electors.

I will predict right here that this lawsuit will get as much traction as any of the legal actions that Trump’s team has filed already in state and lower federal courts already. Which is to say it will go nowhere.

The Texas attorney general is engaging in a patently absurd fishing expedition … and wasting Texans’ valuable taxpayer money.

Well … Justice Barrett?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

You’re a newly minted, crisp-and-clean justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. You were confirmed after a nasty fight in the U.S. Senate.

You haven’t yet decided any major cases and then you might get a complaint from the president of the United States — the fellow who nominated you to the high court — alleging illegality in the vote-counting after an election he is likely to lose.

If you are Justice Amy Coney Barrett, do you really want to have your judicial legacy scarred forever by deciding that Donald Trump’s complaint actually has merit, when legal scholars on both sides of the divide suggest that his complaint is utterly preposterous?

Trump’s complaint might not even get that far. The high court might decide against even considering it. That is my hope. It’s not necessarily my expectation.

If it does go to the court, I cannot possibly believe a majority of the justices — and that includes Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, Trump’s other two appointees — would agree on a complaint that effectively overturns the results of a legitimate, free and fair election.

All of the justices pledge to “follow the law.” From my perch out here in Flyover Country, the ballots are being counted according to the law.

The U.S. Constitution is working.

Don’t do it, Mr. POTUS

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I had hoped a good night’s sleep would refresh me this morning, giving me a chance to look back on what we witnessed last night with a fresh set of eyes and a fresh outlook.

I didn’t get that sleep-filled respite. I awoke this morning around 3; my wife had been up about an hour already.

We watched the presidential election  returns roll in Tuesday night, then went to bed thinking the worst was about to happen … that Donald J. Trump would squeak/slither his way to a second term.

I heard he declared “victory” about 2 a.m. I am glad I was dosing when he did that.

Then, lo and behold, after sitting up for a time during the wee hours with my wife and after going back to the rack for a couple of hours, I found out this morning that Joe Biden took the lead in Wisconsin, that his lead in Nevada was holding, that he then took the lead in Michigan.

If he wins those three states, he gets to 270 electoral votes. He is elected president. He can begin transitioning from private citizen to commander in chief and head of state.

Oh, but wait! Trump likely won’t allow that to happen. He’s going to take this matter to the highest court in the land, with its three justices whom Trump nominated and the Senate confirmed. What in the world is he going to challenge? That the vote counting was done illegally? That someone “rigged” the election to produce a Biden victory? That Martians landed on Earth overnight and voted illegally for the former vice president?

He hasn’t produced a shred of evidence of anything being done illegally.

That brings me to this point, which is that if the Supreme Court’s justices have any sense of honor they will toss whatever complaint Trump brings to them into the crapper and say the allegations are without merit and do not deserve to be heard.

I have this strange belief that the court would do the right thing.

With that I feel a good bit better than I did when I went to bed last night. I now must come to grips with how Donald Trump managed to make this election as close as it has turned out to be.

More on that later.

It ain’t over

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Well now. This is what serious political drama looks like.

Pundits are comparing this suspense to 2016, when Donald Trump shocked the civilized world by defeating Hillary Clinton to be elected president of the United States.

I liken what we’re going through to 2000, when George W. Bush was elected president through a 5 to 4 U.S. Supreme Court decision to stop the recount of votes in Florida; Bush held a 537-vote lead and then won the state’s electoral votes to become president.

Here’s what might play out as we await the last returns from the 2020 race: Joe Biden has 238 electoral votes in the bank; he needs 270 to win election. If he holds onto his slim leads in Nevada and Wisconsin and then manages to catch Donald Trump in Michigan (which is a distinct possibility), he gets to — drum roll — precisely 270 electoral votes.

Is that the end of it? Hah! Hardly! Trump will challenge the results. There might be a recount in, say, Michigan and Wisconsin. Does Trump ask the SCOTUS to stop the recount if Biden is still ahead?

Well, I harken back to what the great Winston Churchill once said about democracy, and I am paraphrasing it here. He called it the most inefficient, cumbersome system of government ever invented … but the best we could ever have. The democratic process is playing out in real time, folks.

GOP wins SCOTUS battle; however …

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It’s done.

The U.S. Senate’s Republican majority had its way with the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. She was confirmed in a 52-48 vote. Not a single Democratic senator voted “yes” on this travesty; one Republican senator, Susan Collins of Maine, voted “no.”

The GOP Senate majority can now look back on the hypocrisy it displayed in jamming this nomination through to confirmation. Many of the Senate Republicans who endorsed Barrett’s nomination said four years ago that no president should be allowed to fill a SCOTUS seat during an election year.

Yet here we are today. Barrett will take her oath and join the court, delivering a solid right-wing conservative majority to the court possibly for decades. Then she well might get to decide whether this election should stand. Hmm. Imagine how she’s going to rule in a case involving the individual who nominated her to the nation’s highest court and who might challenge an election result that delivers a seeming victory to Joseph Biden.

The process that produced Justice Barrett simply stinks beyond measure.

It is known that “elections have consequences.” We have seen the consequence of electing one Donald J. Trump to the presidency, which is the confirmation of a third nominee to the highest court in America.

I do hope the next electoral consequence will be Donald Trump’s defeat next week.