I'm Still Here

[BarryLaverty]

Was going back and looking at some threads before President-Elect Biden's victory, and I remembered that the prediction, said with great certainty, was that I and others who didn't support Trump were going to be 'gone' after the election from this board. That hasn't actually happened, but I have noticed some sparse interactions/attendance by some 'conservatives', like Kirt. Why is that? 

 

(I also reviewed some threads where I may have had a sharp tongue and been somewhat negative in my approach, and I will strive to do better in the Biden Era. )

[osup116]

Hunting Season - Highschool Playoffs. 

And Please Don't  - Would rather you be honest when supreme court makes verdict

[BarryLaverty]

8 minutes ago, osup116 said:

Would rather you be honest when supreme court makes verdict

Please explain, kind sir. 

[osup116]

Pennsylvania's Response Ordered by Justice Alito Reflects Fear of the Defendants About What Might Be Coming

 

By Shipwreckedcrew | Dec 08, 2020 3:47 PM ET

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FILE -In this Nov. 17, 2016 file photo, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito speaks at the Federalist Society's National Lawyers Convention in Washington. Alito is giving the graduation address at a historic Roman Catholic seminary near Philadelphia. Alito will also be awarded an honorary degree during Wednesday's ceremony, May 17, 2017, at the Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary near Wynnewood. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File)

As a general matter, it has always been my view that when you begin a legal argument with a “The Sky is Falling” pronouncement, where the “warning” tells the Court nothing that it does not know already, you are actually insulting the intelligence of the Judge — or in this case the Justices — by wasting time with useless theatrics.

 

 

This was my reaction to one of the sentences set forth in the opening of the Response filed by the Pennsylvania state defendants to the Emergency Application for Injunctive Relief filed by Congressman Mike Kelly and other Plaintiffs earlier today.

Petitioners ask this Court to undertake one of the most dramatic, disruptive invocations of judicial power in the history of the Republic. No court has ever issued an order nullifying a governor’s certification of presidential election results…. They make that request without any acknowledgment of the staggering upheaval, turmoil, and acrimony it would unleash. In issuing equitable relief, this Court rightly seeks to avoid inflaming social disorder. So to say that the public interest militates against Petitioners would be a grave understatement. Their suit is nothing less than an affront to constitutional democracy.

While there are certainly different levels of historic significance when considering the role of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Defendants seem to have lost sight of the fact that this is the institution which outlawed racial segregation in Brown v. Board of Education; recognized states’ ability to regulate private enterprises in Munn v. Illinois; Congress could regulate the sale of commodities that never left a state as having an effect on “interstate commerce” in Wickard v. Filburn; refused to allow the government to use illegally seized evidence in a criminal prosecution in Mapp v. Ohio; etc.

 

The idea that the Supreme Court should shrink from making difficult choices in reaching a decision in a case before it due to the claim by Pennsylvania that no court has ever done this before is moronic.  Yes, it’s never been done before.

Also yes — no State has ever conducted an election in a manner that violated the State’s own Constitution.

There’s a first time for everything, that the US Supreme Court is often the place where these “first-time” occurrences take place.

A comprehensive breakdown of the Response filed by Pennsylania is beyond this first look at what they have filed, and it may be the case that the Supreme Court acts before I have time to break down everything in their filing which will cause me to shift the focus of my attention anyway.  But here are just a couple of comments on the way the Response addresses issues I have raised in my own writings on this topic.

The Response proffers the “almost impossible to make with a straight face” claim that the proceeding still in progress to amend the Pennsylvania Constitution to accommodate “no-excuse” absentee voting is being pursued in order to assist the General Assembly in “harmonizing” the two methods for casting a ballot other than appearing at a polling place to vote.

They claim the legislative history of Act 77 confirms that the General Assembly understood itself to be creating a form of voting distinct from absentee ballots, as is recognized by the ongoing process to amend the Constitution.

 

In 2019, the General Assembly considered, and later moved forward with, a proposed Constitutional amendment that would have expanded the parameters of absentee voting. See Pet. at 8-9. During the same period, the General Assembly passed Act 77. The proposed amendment is still pending and applies to absentee (not mail-in) voting. If passed, it would enable the General Assembly to streamline the Election Code by harmonizing and merging the provisions that apply to mail-in and absentee voting.

As evidence of this distinction, they quote Pennsylvania Senator Mike Folmer, a Senate Co-Sponsorship of the legislation who wrote that the joint resolution was intended to “empower[] voters to request and submit
absentee ballots for any reason”.

If Act 77 lawfully authorized ALL Pennsylvania voters to submit a ballot by mail for any reason, why is there a need to create a “no excuse” provision for Absentee ballots?  What subset of ALL voters in Pennsylvania would have need to resort to an “Absentee ballot” when a “no-excuse” mail-in ballot is available to ALL Pennsylvania voters?

Claiming that Act 77 lawfully created a “new” method of voting, in a manner allowed by the Pennsylvania Constitution, and this method is distinguishable from the “Absentee Voting” authorized in the same Constitution in very limited factual circumstances, is a farcical asserting that only undermines the credibility of all that follows.  It leads to the kinds of questions in oral arguments that start with “Do you want this Court to believe….”  There are generally only bad answers that come from such questions.

 

The Response relies heavily on prior Supreme Court case law dealing with the application of “laches” in State Supreme Court decisions, and language from such decisions stating that the application of “laches” is an independent and non-federal issue that will not be reviewed by the US Supreme Court.  This language certainly exists in many decisions — and most of those decisions are more than 100 years old.

That is not to suggest that Supreme Court precedent expires with age, but only that this is the type of “claim” that the Supreme Court will be able to brush aside IF it wants to reach the merits of the dismissal of the case by th Pennsylvania Supreme Court where that Court avoided addressing the Plaintiffs’ claims on the merits by resorting to the use of “laches” as a vehicle.  If there are five votes that there is a federal constitutional question posed by the allegations made in the Plaintiff’s complaint, the Supreme Court will reach that question without regard to the fact that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court blocked its consideration without creating any factual record to support its claimed “independent state law” grounds for doing so.  Those five votes will not allow “gamesmanship” by the partisan members of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to allow its conduct to evade review.

 

It seems to me from reading the Response that the state defendants spend most of their energy and credibility on staking the claim that the Supreme Court should not entertain these claims due to the collateral implications, and not so much on the basis that what the Pennsylvania General Assembly did was right, or that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was correct in dismissing the Complaint as it did.  This seems very defensive and reflects a fear that the Supreme Court may “call them out” for their misconduct.

But it does not necessarily follow that five members of the Court will their way clear without a clear view of what might follow if they did.

The one issue raised by the Response which I think might resonate with the Court is that any decision which inserts the Court into the determination of Pennsylvania’s Electors runs contrary to “separation of powers” principles which place the responsibility for resolving disputes over the validity of named “Electors” with Congress.  By the passage of the Electoral Count Act — a federal statute and not a constitutional provision — the political branches created within Congress (which accepts the vote of the Electoral College under constitutional provisions) a mechanism for dealing with disputes that arise within a state over the naming of Electors.

 

[osup116]

Odd's are Biden will be our President. He will not be accepted by half the population. 

[Monte1076]

9 minutes ago, osup116 said:

Odd's are Biden will be our President. He will not be accepted by half the population. 

Same as Trump, Obama, GWB...

[gamewatcher63]

11 minutes ago, osup116 said:

Odd's are Biden will be our President. He will not be accepted by half the population. 

He's already not accepted by the radical marxist faction of his own party because of his cabinet nominations. He will start out as the most unpopular POTUS ever....IF he is sworn in...see Texas vs GA,PA,WI,MI.  

[gamewatcher63]

43 minutes ago, BarryLaverty said:

Was going back and looking at some threads before President-Elect Biden's victory, and I remembered that the prediction, said with great certainty, was that I and others who didn't support Trump were going to be 'gone' after the election from this board. That hasn't actually happened, but I have noticed some sparse interactions/attendance by some 'conservatives', like Kirt. Why is that? 

 

(I also reviewed some threads where I may have had a sharp tongue and been somewhat negative in my approach, and I will strive to do better in the Biden Era. )

Maybe it's because us conservatives have to work to pay your salary... which I don't think your earning by being online during school hours.

[DaveTV1]

26 minutes ago, gamewatcher63 said:

He's already not accepted by the radical marxist faction of his own party because of his cabinet nominations. He will start out as the most unpopular POTUS ever....IF he is sworn in...see Texas vs GA,PA,WI,MI.  

I saw that today it was the tree huggers with him not doing enough so far to stop global warming.  He's not even President yet, and they want him to do something now.  We have a far more serious issue than Global Warming going on.  I will say the Wuhan is real, but not as  deadly as many make it out to be.  Global Warming may or may not exist in my opinion.  I haven't seen or felt enough evidence of an increase in temperatures.  

[KirtFalcon]

1 hour ago, BarryLaverty said:

Was going back and looking at some threads before President-Elect Biden's victory, and I remembered that the prediction, said with great certainty, was that I and others who didn't support Trump were going to be 'gone' after the election from this board. That hasn't actually happened, but I have noticed some sparse interactions/attendance by some 'conservatives', like Kirt. Why is that? 

 

(I also reviewed some threads where I may have had a sharp tongue and been somewhat negative in my approach, and I will strive to do better in the Biden Era. )

Boy, I dun told you once ....

http://www.smoaky.com/forum/index.php?/topic/179457-republicans-before-trumplicans-part-34/&do=findComment&comment=3076159

[BarryLaverty]

1 hour ago, gamewatcher63 said:

Maybe it's because us conservatives have to work to pay your salary... which I don't think your earning by being online during school hours.

You don't know anything about my hours or my time or what I do, but like I told a loud lady in the stands many years ago who told me that she pays my salary, 'here's your nickel back!' 

[KirtFalcon]

2 minutes ago, BarryLaverty said:

You don't know anything about my hours or my time or what I do, but like I told a loud lady in the stands many years ago who told me that she pays my salary, 'here's your nickel back!' 

Larry, She probably would have taken it if she had the three cents change she would have owed you ..... 

[BarryLaverty]

1 hour ago, AllGoodNamesRGone said:

Oh we certainly have a good indication lol. 

And you do what, Lion? Dance for nickels on the boardwalk? 

[BarryLaverty]

51 minutes ago, AllGoodNamesRGone said:

You are a mask wearing alone in your car, tree hugging, hypocritical, sheep that love the  delusional, deflecs your problems lunatic who favors the most deplorable people in power.Every post says this so this isn’t debatable. I have my faults but these things cannot describe me.

 

52 minutes ago, AllGoodNamesRGone said:

lunatic who favors the most deplorable people in power.

Think you hit it square, actually, this part, in a nice, well thought out self description, Lion. 

[TTman7]

On 12/8/2020 at 2:51 PM, BarryLaverty said:

Was going back and looking at some threads before President-Elect Biden's victory, and I remembered that the prediction, said with great certainty, was that I and others who didn't support Trump were going to be 'gone' after the election from this board. That hasn't actually happened, but I have noticed some sparse interactions/attendance by some 'conservatives', like Kirt. Why is that? 

 

(I also reviewed some threads where I may have had a sharp tongue and been somewhat negative in my approach, and I will strive to do better in the Biden Era. )

I'm still here too. Lucky you.

[TTman7]

On 12/8/2020 at 5:12 PM, BarryLaverty said:

You don't know anything about my hours or my time or what I do

Evidently not teaching right, if you're on Smoaky all the time during the school day? Cafeteria hours are pretty good I'm assuming.  

[BarryLaverty]

14 minutes ago, TTman7 said:

I'm still here too. Lucky you.

Smoaky Jail have good grub? Welcome back. 

[BarryLaverty]

12 minutes ago, TTman7 said:

Evidently not teaching right, if you're on Smoaky all the time during the school day? Cafeteria hours are pretty good I'm assuming.  

I am not on here 'all day' and I am certainly not on here in the middle of the night compared to some. I just make my appearances memorable. 

[HearEmaGrowlin]

I am still here too just been doing football chatting, and honestly, I wanted to take a break from politics for a bit. 

[Hagar]

If we continue to have elections like this one, there’ll never be another Republican President, so you Dems can rejoice.  

Btw, if you really want to be part of the “Dem Team”, you might learn to speak Chinese.  

[TTman7]

11 hours ago, BarryLaverty said:

Smoaky Jail have good grub? Welcome back. 

Yea, grub was excellent compared to MRE's.

Thanks! Good to be back!

[TTman7]

11 hours ago, BarryLaverty said:

I am not on here 'all day' and I am certainly not on here in the middle of the night compared to some. I just make my appearances memorable. 

...ok.