Anyone living in California knows that we have the worst governor in the nation. That would seem to be an impossible task, when considering people like Witmer in Michigan and Cuomo in New York, but Newsom pulled it off. Up until recently, he got away with it. But he has now been slapped down twice. The first time was when Kevin Kiley got a judge to issue a permanent injunction against Newsom regarding his illegal order to send out mail-in ballots to every registered voter. Think about that for a minute. That judge issued an order that basically disqualified the entire 2020 election in California. While that may not change the outcome in 2020, it absolutely prevents Newsom from doing that again in 2022 or 2024, assuming he is still governor at that time.
But more importantly, the court rejected the arbitrary decision by Newsom to limit attendance at worship services. Now that case is more significant, not just because of the Supreme Court decision, but by the way they handled it. The Supreme Court did not directly deal with the California decision by Newsom, it just remanded that decision back to the 9th Circuit Court. Specifically, the Supreme Court vacated the Ninth Circuit ruling against California churches and sent the case back to the lower courts for reconsideration considering its opinion on the Brooklyn Diocese Case.
That is the way the Supreme Court works. It rarely makes decisions the way one would expect, instead it sends things back down the chain for review. In this case, the 9th Circuit Court has been put on notice. “Fix this or we will fix it for you.” It would be extremely embarrassing for the 9th Circuit Court to be overruled by the Supreme Court, particularly when the Court provided such explicit instruction on how to look at things.
That brings us to the litigation before the Supreme Court regarding the election in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign, not based on the merits, but rather on the doctrine of “laches.” In a bizarre twist of logic, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court dismissed the Trump campaign lawsuit because it was not filed until after the election. Apparently since the Trump campaign did not seek relief, before they knew the election was actually stolen, they waited too long.
Justice Alito set the date for opposition papers to be filed as of December 9th. That is the day after the so-called safe harbor date of the state selecting electors six days prior to the meeting of the electoral college. The following article points out why this may be extremely significant:
I wonder if anyone from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will bother to read this article and would be stunned if they did anything about it. What this mean is that if the Supreme Court accepts the Trump campaign appeal, it voids the results of the election, not based on the merits of the case, but rather on the fact that the lower court ruled incorrectly on the law itself. More importantly, if they do this after December 9th, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, by definition, with not be given the opportunity to fix the ruling because it will be out of time. Talk about poetic justice.
Even if this decision only directly affected Pennsylvania, and Biden would still have enough votes, technically to win the electoral college, this would go off like a bomb. Odds would skyrocket that congress would be compelled to at least debate the legitimacy of the entire election. Remember that congress and only congress can actually choose the next president. That would require a mandatory special session of congress and the vote would be two votes per state in both the house and the senate. Republicans easily win that contest.
Currently there is already one Congressional Representative planning on rejecting the electoral college vote and calling for a debate. All that is necessary is for one senator to join him, and this is at least debated. Naïve people think such a debate would be unlikely to change the outcome, but that is not necessarily true. Particularly, if Pennsylvania electors are rejected and there are other states where the outcome is more than a little murky.
We are really talking about unchartered waters here, so any predictions are impossible. Most wise people think Biden has locked this up, unless something really big happens to change that. It would be foolish to believe that unprecedented events are about to unfold. But unprecedented events happen all the time, they just catch us by surprise because they are unprecedented.
Now throw in just a tiny thought. Democrats are promising to stack the Supreme Court if they win the Presidency and the Senate. Those Supreme Court justices must know that and even the liberal justices are likely appalled. Self-preservation is the first instinct of almost everyone and that includes Supreme Court Justices.
In the meantime, watching the California Scheming provide valuable insight on how the Supreme Court really works that provides some insight into what is at least possible.
TDM