“On Thursday President Trump used Twitter to decry mail-in voting – a standard practice for state elections – and to ‘Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???’ Oh great, so not only is he casually suggesting incinerating American democracy, he’s doing it like he’s offering hors d’oeuvres at a party.
Though the president does not have the power to move an election – that is entrusted by the constitution to Congress – it’s not enough to just consult your pocket constitution, shrug off the president’s tweet and move on, satisfied that we’ve outmaneuvered him with a factcheck.
That’s because the craven husks around Trump are already laying the groundwork for Trump to do exactly what he wants to do, law be damned. For example, the attorney general, William Barr, was asked at a congressional hearing this week whether the president had the power to move an election. It’s as straightforward a legal question as you could possibly get, yet Barr treated the matter as a mystery, saying he had ‘never looked into it’.
The secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, when asked the same question at a separate hearing by Senator Tim Kaine on Thursday, said the department of justice ‘will make that legal determination’. No, they won’t. It’s in the constitution and federal law – it’s as clear as it could it possibly be.
The press seems to be relying on reassurances from other Republicans, such as the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, that the election will occur as scheduled. Stop giving them credit for that. That’s not a courageous stand, it’s just the bare minimum. Just because the bar is all the way on the floor doesn’t mean we have to give him credit for stepping over it.” —Seth Meyers
http://idiocracy23.blogspot.com/2016/06/john-hulse-collected-poems-1985-2015.html
“A magisterial collection. A combination of Bukowski’s Last Night On Earth and Orwell’s 1984.”
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