Sedition: “incitement of discontent or rebellion against a government; any action, speech, or writing promoting such discontent or rebellion.”
The Constitution: “No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion [sedition] against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
Last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, indicted on securities fraud and accused by top aides of bribery and abuse of office, filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court against Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Wisconsin, alleging that the states’ election results should be overturned because of fraud and expansion of voting rules.
In addition, 17 Republican attorneys general, and 126 Republican House members, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), joined this seditious brief.
Republican activist groups also joined with briefs, as did right-wingers including disgraced former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.
The lawsuit was condemned by legal experts, as “legally incoherent, factually untethered” and “fundamentally a misunderstanding” of our election laws. But many experts are saying that these actions are seditious.
What should be the remedy for these sedition acts? Don’t seat these representatives at all. Or, at the very least, censure their behavior.
The four states targeted for the nullification of their 20 million votes forcefully rejected the allegations. They noted that prior lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies litigated these matters and all judges found no evidence for the allegations of fraud.
“Texas’s effort to get this Court to pick the next President has no basis in law or fact. The Court did not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process and sent a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated,” Pennsylvania’s brief stated.
Thankfully, The Supreme Court rejected the case wholesale 9-0 including the 3 Trump appointees, Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.
And finally this week the Electoral College vote has slammed the door on this case.
Even so, many Republicans continue to believe conspiracy theories about mass voter fraud and refuse to accept that President-elect Joe Biden beat Donald Trump.
One would think that voters all over the country would be embarrassed by these two-faced Republicans, many of whom admit privately that Joe Biden won, but put on their Trump act in public. But for the most part, Trumplicans continue to support throwing out the election.
Apparently, though, this attack on our democracy was too much for even some conservatives.
No other group has been more loyal to Republicans than Evangelical Christians. However, Karen Swallow Prior, an evangelical professor, said she was ashamed to have voted for local and state Republican candidates, many of whom backed these lawsuits that hurt our democratic republic.
Author David French published a column Sunday in The Dispatch, maintaining that “the frenzy and the fury of the post-election period has laid bare the sheer idolatry and fanaticism of Christian Trumpism.”
The most stinging comments were from Beth Moore, a Southern Baptist author, who said she has “never seen anything in these United States more astonishingly seductive & dangerous to the saints of God than Trumpism.”
Interestingly, neither Kentucky’s senators, nor our Representatives, signed onto this seditious lawsuit. I’m not sure why.
“Perhaps Mitch McConnell saw where this was going and did not want anyone from his state to be forever tainted with these seditious acts. Perhaps they said ‘I swore an oath to the Constitution, not to Donald Trump, and this time at least, I’m going to honor that oath,‘ writes Bruce Maples, publisher of ForwardKy.com.
But perhaps, our Kentucky Republicans realized the truth contained in the words of Michigan’s Republican Speaker of the House, who said, “If we didn’t honor our oath, I fear we’d lose our country forever.”
May these acts of sedition go down in infamy … and may we band together to protect our country and our democracy.
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