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Number of GOP Congress Members to Object to Electoral College Votes

 From The Epoch Times:

More House members have said they will object to the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6 as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) announced he would join the effort. Rep.-elect Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) said Tuesday that he will also object.

“I will vote on January 6th to CHALLENGE the Electoral College because the American people deserve a FREE and FAIR election! The FRAUD that DID take place on Election Day can’t be allowed to stand!” Jackson wrote.

On Wednesday, Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) said he will join the effort, which is being led by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.). President Donald Trump spoke with Brooks and several other Republican House members earlier this month and backs their effort.

“On January 6, 2021, I plan to object to the Electoral College certification from states that experienced these unprecedented issues like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin,” Duncan said in a statement. “I plan to object for the people of the Third District of South Carolina and the millions of Americans who are demanding transparency into the 2020 election. We the People know this is a pivotal decision for our great country. May God bless the United States of America.”

Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) also said Tuesday he would object to Electoral Vote counts from states that did not abide by the rule of law. Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said in an interview this week she has received word that even more lawmakers will join.

“We refuse to certify a stolen election,” she told the Kyle Olson Show. “As members of Congress, it’s our duty to protect the integrity of our elections.”

Meanwhile, Hawley became the first senator to announce that he will object to the certification during the Joint Session of Congress.

“I cannot vote to certify the electoral college results on Jan. 6 without raising the fact that some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws,” Hawley wrote in a statement on Wednesday. “And I cannot vote to certify without pointing out the unprecedented effort of mega-corporations, including Facebook and Twitter, to interfere in this election, in support of Joe Biden,” he added.

Other than Hawley, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), and Rand Paul (R-Ky.)—as well as Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.)—have said they are open to the idea of objecting to electors. The move requires both a senator and a representative to carry out, which then triggers a two-hour debate and congressional vote on whether a state’s electoral votes are valid. (Read more.)

From The National Pulse:

Senator Josh Hawley revealed he will object to the certification of electoral college results on January 6th. Hawley notes his decision is a response to the “unprecedented effort of mega-corporations, including Facebook and Twitter, to interfere in this election in support of Joe Biden” along with “allegations of voter fraud.” (Read more.)

 

Also from The Epoch Times:

For the past several weeks, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and other House GOP lawmakers have pledged to object to the counting of the Electoral College votes during the Joint Session of Congress. Their effort requires a senator and a House member that would trigger a series of debates before a vote on whether to certify a state’s Electoral College votes is held. Some members of the GOP leadership, including Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), have said their efforts are doomed to fail. And over the past weekend, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), in comments widely publicized by news outlets, referred to Brooks’s effort as “a scam.” And, according to anonymously sourced reports, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told GOP senators that they should not take part in the House GOP-led effort on Jan. 6. Another Republican, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), said the attempt to challenge the votes is an improbable one.

“It’s basically going through the motions,” Cornyn said, reported The Hill. “It’s a futile exercise.” But Brooks, for his part, indicated that “dozens” of House members back the effort. “We’re going to sponsor and co-sponsor objections to the Electoral College vote returns,” Brooks told Fox News on Dec. 28. (Read more.)

Also from The Epoch Times:

President Donald Trump’s campaign adviser said the team is aiming to present evidence during a potential congressional debate on Jan. 6 if lawmakers in the House and Senate object to states’ Electoral College votes.

As of Wednesday, it appears that at least one member of the Senate, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), and a number of House lawmakers will object to the electoral votes during the Joint Session of Congress. Hawley announced he would object to the electoral vote, pointing to previous Democratic efforts to do so during the 2004 and 2016 presidential elections. After the objection, an hours-long debate will occur.

Miller said that evidence could be presented in Congress, which would differ from what the Trump campaign presented in courts over the past several weeks.

“We will have a chance in front of the American people, next week to present these cases, all these evidences of fraud,” Miller told Newsmax, pointing to a lawsuit filed by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) against Vice President Mike Pence earlier this week to prevent him from confirming Joe Biden’s electoral victory. Miller told the outlet that the 1887 Electoral Count Act allows the vice president, who is the president of the Senate, to preside over the Joint Session of Congress.

Then, Miller told Newsmax that he hopes at least one senator and representative join together to object to the Electoral College vote, allowing for two hours of debate. (Read more.)

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Reviving the Ember Days

 We all need to do more penance. From CNA:

In a revival of an historic custom of the Church, Bishop Douglas Lucia of Syracuse has invited Catholics of his diocese to participate in the Ember Days, traditional days of fasting and prayer, for the intention of an increase in vocations. The bishop established the Ember Days for a diocesan year of vocations, and granted a partial indulgence to their observance, in a Nov. 19 decree. Fr. Christopher Seibt, the Diocese of Syracuse's liturgy director, told CNA that the idea came about because the diocese is also observing a year of prayer for vocations, and Ember Days have traditionally been days of prayer for vocations.

“Ember Days are days of prayer and fasting that mark the changing of times and seasons in order to bring about deeper spiritual renewal,” Seibt told CNA. (Read more.)

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Christmastime in Old L.A.

From Curbed Los Angeles:

On November 16, 1950, the city’s tallest elevator—at seven stories—debuted at the Robinson’s department store in Downtown LA. According to the Los Angeles Times, thousands of people lined the street in front of the store to view windows that told the story of “The Littlest Angel” by Charles Tazewell. “So large was the crowd, that for a time traffic was slowed almost to a standstill in the vicinity of the store,” the Times reported.

Those lucky enough to muscle their way inside to the main floor found vested boy choristers singing carols as a pageant of fashions featuring 50 models played out on a dozen stages. At the “Crystal Aisle of Gifts” on the sixth floor, “gift secretaries wearing uniform dresses of vivid chartreuse accented with corsages of holly” aided shoppers. But the biggest draw was Saint Nicholas, who “received his own special domain on the fifth floor.”

Now the year is 2019 and most shopping malls sit empty, while once-mighty retailers like Sears and Barney’s shutter stores with reckless abandon. It wasn’t always this way. Long before Amazon Prime, residents of Los Angeles, and the United States at large, spent countless tired hours during the holiday season pushing through crowded department stores searching for gifts and the occasional bargain. There were also luxurious holiday experiences to be had.

One of the fastest-growing cities on the West Coast in the 20th century heyday of the department store, Los Angeles was home to legions of towering shopping complexes that competed fiercely for customers, particularly during the last weeks of the year.

As early as 1908, the LA Times was reporting on the December crush of shoppers in the Downtown retail district: “Broadway, Spring Street and all the other thoroughfares on which holiday goods are sold surged with the mob that was scrambling to fill stockings; the big stores were jammed.”

Stores like Bullock’s, Coulter’s, Robinson’s, and May Co. attracted flocks of holiday shoppers with elaborate window displays, towering Christmas trees, and the chance to speak to jolly Old Saint Nick himself. It was a tradition that would carry on through the 1980s.

“Christmas was mind-blowing,” author and historian Julia Bricklin recalls of the Bullock’s in Torrance. “Carolers everywhere, Santa Claus, white lights and decorations, the exquisite free wrapping rooms, and free (I think) hot chocolate at the various eating rooms.” (Read more.)

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The Great Reset

 From John Horvat at Life Site:

The question is not if there is to be a reset but when. This decision is forced upon us by Schwab’s Great Reset. Its promoters openly say that everyone must be on board, like it or not. All the rich and powerful have signed off on it. Schwab claims his reset will lead down the sure path to a better future. I disagree. I believe it is an evil, a wrong choice that will take us to ruin.  

For all the hullabaloo about this new program, Schwab’s plan is remarkably unoriginal. It reflects old socialist thinking about humanity, society and industry. Indeed, the left always progresses by recycling old, moldy ideas. The Great Reset rehashes leftist notions of grand central planning, egalitarian social structuring and changing human nature that have failed over the decades. The danger of the plan is its deceptiveness. It disguises its goals under the pretext of “reimagining” capitalism.

Schwab’s Great Reset is total. It calls for the world to “act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions.” Every country must participate, and all industries must be transformed. There is no opt-out. (Read more.)

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Have Americans Been Lied To?

 From Just the News:

In a Christmas Eve interview with the New York Times, Fauci acknowledged he had offered a lower estimate of the level of herd immunity necessary to stop the COVID-19 pandemic because he thought Americans would be discouraged by hearing his true thoughts on the issue. He recently raised his estimate on the herd immunity threshold "partly based on new science," the newspaper reported, "and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks." (Read more.)

 

From The Federalist:

 In an interview last week with The New York Times, Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted something that many of us have suspected for some time: The media-anointed, all-knowing guru of COVID has been fudging the truth in order to encourage what he views as better behavior from the American people. Put simply, Fauci has been acting less like a public official and more like a parent keeping certain truths from his children.

This quote, which has been rightfully making the rounds, really tells the whole tale. Asked why he changed his mind about how much vaccination would result in herd immunity, Fauci said, “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent … Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85. We need to have some humility here …. We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.” (Read more.)

From The Dan Bongino Show:

On Saturday, California had the highest per capita rate of COVID-19 infections over a week’s time in the country. Over that time period, California had 100.5 daily COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents. That poor record has continued. Yesterday alone, California had 22,856 infections. This seems a little ironic, doesn’t it? After all, California was the first state to put a lockdown in place, they have arguably been the most locked down state in the country since then, they had a mask mandate starting in June and according to COVIDcast, 90.87% of Californians are wearing masks. Everything the experts have said to do to fight corona, California has done and then some. It’s almost as if the experts have been wrong about the coronavirus every step of the way and are still regularly getting it wrong. (Read more.)

 

From InfoWars:

Official figures out of San Francisco show that drug overdoses have killed almost four times more people than COVID-19 this year, and yet the government continues to hand out free needles to addicts.

“A record 621 people died of drug overdoses in San Francisco so far this year, a staggering number that far outpaces the 173 deaths from COVID-19 the city has seen thus far,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle. (Read more.)

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Fig Trees in Unlikely Places

 From Atlas Obscura:

They brought them in suitcases and in trunks, tucked into the corners of boats and, later, on airplanes. Seeds that became rapini, cardoons, artichokes, cucuzza squash. Cuttings from knobby grape vines that flourished into backyard arbors. And, above all, bits of stick that grew into fig trees. Starting in the late 1800s, when Italian immigrants poured into U.S. port cities, the Mediterranean trees took root in unexpected places: Astoria, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Bayonne, cities whose cold-weather climates seemed hostile to the plant. Yet the trees grew, even if their owners had to wrap them in burlap or bury them underground so they’d survive the cold winters.

You can still identify historically Italian neighborhoods by the presence of backyard fig trees. “I’ve literally walked around Brooklyn looking in backyards, and I can tell,” says Mary Menniti. “Oh, there’s a fig tree in the backyard and a Madonna. That’s an Italian-American garden.” (Read more.)

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Gingerbread: The Romantic History

From My Modern Met:

For centuries, gingerbread has been an important part of holiday tradition. It has also provided an opportunity for creatives to impress friends and family with intricate cookies or edible structures. Dabbling in an artistic baking experiment is always fun, but at the end of the day, gingerbread is best when shared with loved ones. Did you know that intricate gingerbread cookies in the shape of your partner symbolized romantic love in medieval times? The dough was pressed into carefully made wooden molds and painted over with icings and gold leaf.

The history of gingerbread is a fascinating reflection of society, especially the romantic  side. So let’s dive back in time and see how the origins of this commonly festive baked good was far more alluring and how that sentiment evolved. And if you feel inspired to craft a gingerbread gift for partners and friends, we’ve got some crafting kits down below. We’ve even got a Medieval recipe to help you win extra points for authenticity! (Read more.)

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How Many Americans Have Died?

 From Gateway Pundit:

On Christmas Day the government’s television channel, PBS, reported on the the China coronavirus first thing.  This is all they talk about but they never mention China, they label the pandemic COVID-19...The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made the announcement last night to help prevent the spread of new highly contagious COVID variants in Britain. That comes as the U.S. death toll surpassed 330,000. And hospitalizations nationwide hit a new record high yesterday, more than 120,000. But this reporting is questionable. We reported in August that the CDC admits that only 6% of all deaths in the US classified as Coronavirus deaths actually died from the China Coronavirus alone. Yes, this was from the CDC’s own reporting.  So today it looks like less than 20,000 deaths in the US (330,000 x 6% = 19,800) over the past year have actually been due to the coronavirus only.  The remainder of the deaths reported by the CDC include accidents, overdoses, suicides and those presumed to have had the coronavirus upon their death. (Read more.)

 

From The National Pulse:

Executives from American tech giants such as Facebook and Google attended an annual conference organized by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the body responsible for leading the Chinese Communist Party’s digital campaign to censor factual narratives and push fraudulent information about COVID-19.

The unearthed attendance of U.S. tech leaders to the World Internet Conference follows leaked documents from the Chinese Communist Party revealing that its Cyberspace Administration – which spearheaded the conference – was tasked with deploying legions of hundreds of thousands of people online. (Read more.)

 

Also from The National Pulse:

Professor Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist who played a key role in convincing the British government to adopt lockdowns, revealed that the country’s lockdowns were meant to emulate those carried out by the Chinese Communist Party  – modeled to strip civil liberties and exert authoritarian control over citizens.

In Ferguson’s recent interview with The Times, he revealed that lockdowns he championed as part of Britain’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) Board, were rooted in those carried out by the Chinese Communist Party. Dubbed “Professor Lockdown” by many for his contributions to swaying the British government to adopt stringent lockdown measures, Ferguson ultimately stepped down from the SAGE board after he violated his own lockdown protocols. (Read more.)

 

From Life Site:

Published in November in the scientific journal Nature Communications, the paper was compiled by 19 scientists, mainly from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, but also from scientific institutions across China as well as in the U.K. and Australia. It focused on the residents of Wuhan, ground zero for COVID-19, where 9,899,828 people took part in a screening program between May 14 and June 1, which provided clear results as to the possibility of any asymptomatic transmission of the virus.

Asymptomatic transmission has been the underlying justification of lockdowns enforced all across the world. The most recent guidance from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) still states that the virus “can be spread by people who do not have symptoms.” In fact, the CDC claimed that asymptomatic people “are estimated to account for more than 50 percent of transmissions.”

U.K. Health Secretary Matt Hancock also promoted this message, explaining that the concept of asymptomatic spread of COVID-19 led to the U.K. advocating masks and referring to the “problem of asymptomatic transmission.” (Read more.)

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Pence Lawsuit

 From Louis Gohmert:

Congressman Louie Gohmert (TX-01) released the following statement regarding the lawsuit filed against the Vice President:

“The 2020 presidential election was one we'd expect to see in a banana republic, not the United States of America. In fact, the rampant fraud and unconstitutional actions that took place were so egregious that seven contested states-- Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin all sent dueling slates of electors to Congress. This puts Vice President Mike Pence in a position where some argue he has to choose between morality and the law. That is not the case.

“It is also critical to note that as many formerly in the mainstream media, now the Alt-Left media, continue to say that every court has said there is no evidence of fraud.  That is disingenuous, deceitful, and flat out dishonest. The truth is that no court so far has had the morality and courage to allow evidence of fraud to be introduced in front of it.

“We continue to hold out hope that there is a federal judge who understands that the fraud that stole this election will mean the end of our republic, and this suit would insure that the Vice-President will only accept electors legitimately and legally elected. There must be an opportunity for a day in court when fraud was this prevalent.

“It is for this reason that I and other plaintiffs have filed a complaint for expedited declaratory and emergency injunctive relief to seek judgement from the court on the Vice President's authority when presiding over the Senate during the Joint Session of Congress. We are asking the court to uphold the powers laid out in the United States Constitution which grant the Vice President the exclusive authority and sole discretion in determining which electoral votes to count. As outlined in the filing, the Electoral Count Act is unconstitutional because it directs Vice President Pence to legitimize electoral votes in violation of the Electors Clause and limits or eliminates his Twelfth Amendment authority to determine which slates of electors should be counted and which, if any, may not be counted.  This is fundamental because no statute can constitutionally supply rules to the extent that such statute violates the U.S. Constitution. 

Thanks to spineless politicians, corrupt state officials and a coordinated effort to undermine the will of the American people in favor of business as usual in the D.C. swamp, we now find ourselves in a place where a stolen election becomes just another one of the miscarriages of justice this town refuses to remedy.  The D.C. elites want to sweep these electoral injustices under the rug, just as they have done with countless other scandals such as the Russia-collusion hoax, the Biden-Ukrainian quid-pro quo, and Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified information, to mention only a few. For the sake of the future of our Republic, come January 6th, Vice President Pence must be authorized to uphold the legal votes of millions of Americans and preserve our nation's great experiment in self-governance.” (Read more.)

 

From The Epoch Times:

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), the Republican leader of a plan to challenge Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, said that “dozens” of House members are going to sponsor a measure to object.

“There are dozens in the House of Representatives who have reached that conclusion that I have; we’re going to sponsor and co-sponsor objections to the Electoral College vote returns,” Brooks told Fox News on Dec. 28.

The move, which must occur during the Joint Session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, requires a member of the House and a member of the Senate to carry out. So far, Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) has suggested he might join Brooks and the other GOP House lawmakers. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has suggested he might as well. Neither Tuberville nor Paul has made public statements affirming the effort.

Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-Ky.) has said that he thinks the effort led by Brooks is doomed to fail regardless of who joins.

Meanwhile, Brooks said in the Fox interview that it isn’t clear whether any Republican senator will take part in the challenge.

“The real issue is whether we have any senators who have done their homework and have studied what has transpired … that there has been massive voter fraud and election theft unlike anything we have seen in American history,” Brooks said. (Read more.)

 

Also from The Epoch Times:

Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, said this week that he believes the 2020 general election was “an embarrassment” for the American people and a “crucible moment” for America. He added that to move forward, the government and the American people need to reconcile.

Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, made the comments to The Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders” during an interview before Christmas, in which he talked about threats the United States is facing, his prescription for a better America, and his yearslong political saga that ended with a pardon from the president.

Flynn said, “Going forward, as we get through this election, particularly this election, which is a crucible moment in our history, unprecedented, never happened before, and it’s an embarrassment to me as an American citizen, never mind somebody who served in our highest levels of our government—to the rest of the world, because of what we have done for others around the world, and we can’t even get our own damn elections correct.”

“But moving forward, we have to have a reconciliation between the government and ‘we the people,’ the people of this country,” he added.

The 2020 general election has garnered intense scrutiny over unconstitutional last-minute changes to mail-in voting rules made due to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic, a raft of allegations about election irregularities, and the subsequent legal battle launched by the Trump campaign.

In recent weeks, a slew of evidence from sworn witnesses and experts emerged raising questions about the integrity of the Nov. 3 election, including not verifying signatures on ballots, alleged backdating of ballots, and votes by dead or ineligible people. (Read more.)

From Newsmax:

Newly elected Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., said she will object to Electoral College results certification on Jan. 6. That’s the day the Electoral College results will be counted officially in a joint session of Congress.

"Guided by the US Constitution and my responsibility to my constituents, I will object to the Electoral College results on January 6th," wrote Boebert in a Twitter post Thursday per The Epoch Times.

After being accused on Twitter of taking a stance solely to make news and further her career, Boebert replied: "Newsflash: I'm not here to make a career for myself. I'm here to save our country from socialists.

Earlier this month, Boebert told The Epoch Times she supported the president’s legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

"This is a contested election," she said, "and I believe that President Trump should fight with everything that he has and use all of the authority that he has as the President of the United States to make sure that we have a free and fair election. We need to be looking into these allegations; we need to be taking them seriously." (Read more.)

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New England Colonial Christmas Traditions

 From The New England Historical Society:

Perhaps you’ve sung the Christmas carol, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, with its chorus of “Oh, bring us a figgy pudding…we won’t go until we get some.” They meant it.

The more obliging citizens would fork over the goods. Others, however, declined —  resulting in fights, rock-throwing and hard feelings. Even more abhorrent to the Puritans was the sexual promiscuity that accompanied Christmas. Celebrants cast aside their inhibitions.

One of the more colorful New England colonial Christmas traditions was mumming, in which men dressed like women (and vice versa) or simply disguised themselves in a range of costumes. Mumming could be as innocent as street theater or as bawdy as a loosely disguised roving orgy.

The Puritan objected to the custom because a person disguised could slip into a neighbor’s house for an assignation without raising eyebrows. How commonplace was the debauchery? It’s probably impossible to say, though the good Puritans wanted nothing to do with it.

In 1681, with the Civil War over in England, the crown began pressuring Massachusetts to embrace the Anglican Church and roll back Puritan reforms. The colony complied by repealing the laws against Christmas. But the holiday remained frowned upon. (Read more.)

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A Cozy Christmas

From Victoria:

Though the couple’s blended family of seven children have grown up and gone, there is nothing empty about this nest. Patty’s penchant for beautiful antiques and richly hued rugs, as well as for pretty wallpaper and textured wall treatments, ensures the abode is quite cozy and reflective of her refined taste. Her forays to Dallas’s myriad markets have resulted in a wonderful cache of furnishings, from a striking black decoupage screen and tole trays to a pair of majolica-esque lamps that she counts as one of her favorite finds. (Read more.)

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It's for Mike Pence to Judge

 From American Thinker:

On January 6, a joint session of Congress will open with Vice President Pence presiding as president of the Senate.  His power will be plenary and unappealable.  You heard that right.  As president of the Senate, every objection comes directly to him, and he can rule any objection "out of order" or "denied."  His task will be to fulfill his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and to ensure that the laws be faithfully executed.  This is a high standard of performance, and V.P. Pence will have two choices.  He can roll over on "certified" electors, or he can uphold the law.

Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution gives state legislatures "plenary authority" as enunciated in Bush v. Gore.  This is key, since the counting of votes is discussed in Article II, the 12th Amendment, and 3 USC 15.  To this we must add the history of counting and objections recounted by Alexander Macris (here and here).  Put bluntly, it's as clear as mud.  Add to that the fact that the contested states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have sent dueling slates of electors to D.C.  This means that the V.P. has to decide how he will handle the situation when two sealed envelopes are handed to him from any of those states.

Macris points out that in 1800, even with constitutional deficiencies in Georgia, Thomas Jefferson blithely counted defective electoral votes from Georgia, effectively voting himself into the presidency.  This demonstrates that the president of the Senate is the final authority on any motions or objections during the vote-counting.  There is no appeal.  That doesn't mean there won't be any outrage.  Whatever Pence does, people will be angry.  But what does the law demand?

Seven contested states clearly violated their own laws.  Rather than list the facts, which have been detailed in multiple articles, we must consider the following:

An election is a process of counting votes for candidates. Only valid, lawful votes may be counted.  A valid lawful vote is:

• Cast by an eligible, properly registered elector as prescribed by laws enacted by the state Legislature.
• Cast in a timely manner, as prescribed by laws enacted by the state Legislature.
• Cast in a proper form as prescribed by laws enacted by the state Legislature.

Any process that does not follow these rules is not an election.  Anything that proceeds from it cannot be regarded as having any lawful import.

Most commentators suggest that a process of collecting pieces of paper with marks on them is an election regardless of errors, omissions, and even deliberate malfeasance.  This is a mistake.  Imagine a golf tournament where every bad shot by one player gets a do-over, but the competing player has to follow USGA rules in detail.  One player gets to drop freely out of hazards, but the other has to tackle every embedded ball as it lies.  The result is a travesty.

The same thing applies to elections.  If there are a handful of improper votes, we can suggest that there was in fact an election, perhaps tainted, but the election wasn't materially harmed.  But when the people charged with managing the election decide to ignore the law, whatever process they supervise is not the process defined by the law.  Therefore, it is not an election. (Read more.)

 

From Newsmax:

Newly elected Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., said she will object to Electoral College results certification on Jan. 6. That’s the day the Electoral College results will be counted officially in a joint session of Congress.

"Guided by the US Constitution and my responsibility to my constituents, I will object to the Electoral College results on January 6th," wrote Boebert in a Twitter post Thursday per The Epoch Times.

After being accused on Twitter of taking a stance solely to make news and further her career, Boebert replied: "Newsflash: I'm not here to make a career for myself. I'm here to save our country from socialists."

Earlier this month, Boebert told The Epoch Times she supported the president’s legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

"This is a contested election," she said, "and I believe that President Trump should fight with everything that he has and use all of the authority that he has as the President of the United States to make sure that we have a free and fair election. We need to be looking into these allegations; we need to be taking them seriously." (Read more.)

 

From Team Candace Owens:

Pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell recently released a massive 270 page document to Zenger News including affidavits, evidence and testimony from many witnesses and sources detailing alleged fraud in the 2020 election. Powell has been on the frontlines of fighting the alleged fraud in the 2020 election, bringing many serious accusations to the table. Zenger wrote, “Powell contends that documents in the binder prove direct foreign interference and fraud tainted the Nov. 3 presidential election, and that President Donald Trump was re-elected. The entire binder is reproduced here for exclusively.” (Read more.)

 

More HERE.

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Christmas at Home

 From American Remnant:

Christmas eve was a time for a church service, and the children of the Sunday School class would duly perform the perennial nativity play that evening.  We dressed for the occasion in our Christmas best, and I rather enjoyed wearing a coat. Living in Texas, we always hoped for cold weather at Christmas time—it set the mood. 

After the Christmas eve service, the church elders would hand out goody bags to the children. I remember some oranges especially as a treat in winter. The founding families of our congregation were rural and working class.  They had moved to Houston for jobs during the Depression, and my father, raised in the 1930s and 40s, fondly remembered getting such small tokens of Christmas cheer as a tremendous boyhood treat.

Afterwards, my family, including both sets of grandparents, gathered at our home for more Christmas cheer—maybe a drink of wine, maybe something stronger, for the adults, and treats lovingly prepared by my mother for everyone.  We kept the living room dark save for the lights on the tree—and there would be hundreds of them, my mother was meticulous in decorating our Christmas tree—and the presents beneath were the object of much speculation by the children.

Christmas morning, we boys would awaken earlier than usual, already eager to get to the presents under the tree.  My father and mother would decide when the moment had come, and it was off to unwrap them.  My mother took pictures of everything—we have hundreds of photos to remember this all by—and she snapped photos as we opened our presents.  We had home movies of more than one Christmas morning, as well. During my childhood, we would watch them projected onto a screen set up by my father in our living room.

Music was an important part of the celebration. Starting in December, our RCA phonograph filled that little house with Christmas songs, and we memorized every line, singing along with gusto. 

There were Christmas movies, and I read the TV Guide carefully to pinpoint the time of showings of movies like White Christmas, as well as the ever-present TV Christmas specials from stars like Bing Crosby and Andy Williams. (Read more.)

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Christmas Dinner at Blenheim Palace

 

From The Daily Mail:

Blenheim Palace has unveiled its stunning traditional festive decor ahead of the Marlborough family's Christmas celebrations, as they invite visitors to experience the classic winter look of the state rooms - complete with dazzling trees, twinkling lights and festive garlands. The UK's only non-royal palace, the family seat of the Duke of Marlborough, has been transformed into a remarkable Yuletide paradise for visitors to enjoy until January 3rd. While the Oxfordshire venue is renowned for its spectacular and inventive themes - with last year's being an Alice In Wonderland extravaganza, this year the family have decided to scale back their display. (Read more.)

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Did Communism Ever Die?

 From LifeSiteNews:

Finally, there was another strange phenomenon: the United Nations came up with the Agenda 21. I remember how I one day, at a feast with people from the former Communist part of Germany, discussed with them this new agenda that had been agreed upon by the United Nations at the Brazil Earth Summit in 1992. Having read about this agenda, I told these acquaintances that this agenda contains such ideas as that one has to share one’s car with one’s neighbor since the environment was to be protected. The Agenda 21 document, for example, expounded: “Raise public awareness of the environmental impacts of transport and travel behaviour through mass media campaigns and support for non-governmental and community initiatives promoting the use of non-motorized transport, shared driving and improved traffic safety measures.” Furthermore, they proposed to assist “individuals and households to make environmentally sound purchasing decisions,” which includes “deposit/refund systems,” that is to say, shared ownership of goods.
It sounded so Communist to me at the time, and I remember how my interlocutors shook their heads, too. They could not believe it, having just been freed from a Communist dictatorship.

By now, this Agenda 21 has been further developed, not only into the Sustainable Development Goals which are anti-life and pro-birth control. The Davos Economic Forum group just published a video which makes one's hair stand up. “You'll own nothing. And you'll be happy,” they predict for the year 2030, proposing that in a few years, we will merely “rent” whatever we “want” for a certain period of time, thus repeating the idea that I discussed at the beginning of the 1990s with my acquaintances from formerly Communist Eastern Germany. Private property is to be abolished for the sake for a purported environmental crisis. Remember how the former president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, was first among that new Green Movement at that time? That he founded, in 1993, a year after the 1992 Earth Summit that agreed upon the Agenda 21 and because of it, the Green Cross Movement? Is this a coincidence? Or remember how Leonardo Boff, a proponent of Marxist Liberation Theology in Southern America, suddenly went green? Interesting about this Davos video is that when it states that “the U.S. won't be the leading world superpower,” but, instead that “a handful of states will dominate,” it shows a photo with flags, at the center of which flies the Turkish one, overshadowing the U.S. flag.

It seems now to me, looking back, how, while we went to sleep thinking that Communism was effectively dead, other themes and strategies were developed that still aimed at establishing modified Communist systems in the world. National borders were to be weakened, national economies globalized, education leveled down with new economically inspired reforms, while the largest Communist country in the world, China, was somehow welcomed as a normal partner on the international level.

On top of all of this, there suddenly also emerged the LGBT agenda. Where did it come from? When did it emerge? Also here, I remember the homosexual lobby (which was the first of that multi-faceted movement) started to get stronger in light of the HIV discussion. Information booklets about the disease were being used by this lobby to present homosexual relations as something normal. Yes, that was also in the 1990s. Strange coincidence!

It seems now, in retrospect, as if Communism merely shifted its approaches and agendas, but not its goal. It infiltrated the West more indirectly, by means of soft power, rather than with the help of Soviet tanks. My husband, Dr. Robert Hickson, likes to quote here James Burnham, a former Trotskyite and political analyst who warned the West not to adapt to the enemy, without realizing it. Burnham called one of his essays The Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism (1964). My husband once quoted Burnham with these insistent warnings: “From the communist point of view, every institution in the camp of the enemy is a battleground: churches as well as armies; business corporations and trade unions alike; art, literature and science; Boy Scout troops along with intelligence agencies; communications media just as much as political parties.”

This, we need to understand also who stands behind Communism. We might have thought in too limited ways that it was just the Communist party of the Soviet Union that dominated the East. But who prepared and implemented the Communist Revolution? Here, we can refer to a letter written on November 8, 1918 to the papal nuncio Archbishop Eugenio Pacelli by Cardinal Felix von Hartmann, a German prelate, in which he warns the Pope of an impending Communist revolution in Germany that aimed at destroying the German monarchy, but also aimed at the Catholic Church. (Read more.)

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Ivory From A 16th-Century Shipwreck

 From Smithsonian:

An interdisciplinary effort involving archaeologists, geneticists and ecologists, the paper was published Thursday in the journal Current Biology. By extracting genetic material from the tusks’ cells, the researchers were able to identify the ivory’s source as forest elephants. The team then analyzed mitochondrial DNA to determine that the elephants whose tusks sank with the ship came from 17 distinct herds in West Africa.

“Elephants live in female-led family groups, and they tend to stay in the same geographic area throughout their lives,” lead author Alida de Flamingh, a biologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, tells Victoria Gill of BBC News. “We were able to reconstruct complete mitochondrial genomes from these really old samples.”

When the scientists compared their findings to genetic information about African elephants today, they could only identify 4 of the 17 herds. This decline probably reflects the extinction of elephant families long threatened by the ivory trade and the destruction of their habitats.

African forest elephants are smaller than their savanna cousins. Today, they continue to face threats from humans seeking ivory. According to the African Wildlife Foundation, poachers have killed more than 60 percent of the animals over the past decade; the species now occupies just a quarter of its historic range. Most forest elephants live in jungle environments, but a chemical analysis of the carbon and nitrogen isotopes found in the 16th-century tusks showed that they once lived in a mixed woodland and grassland savanna. (Read more.)

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How Communism Starts

 From The Epoch Times:

President Donald Trump on Christmas Eve repeated his concerns over Big Tech censorship a day after he vetoed a defense-spending bill over Congress’s failure to remove liability protections for Silicon Valley’s social media companies.

“Twitter is going wild with their flags, trying hard to suppress even the truth. Just shows how dangerous they are, purposely stifling free speech. Very dangerous for our Country. Does Congress know that this is how Communism starts?” Trump said in a Twitter post on Thursday night.

“Cancel Culture at its worst. End Section 230!” he said.

Trump and his administration have repeatedly underscored the risks of unbalanced policing of user content on social media platforms, claiming that the companies are engaging in conduct that limits conservative viewpoints and stifles free speech. The president and the Justice Department have urged Congress to roll back legal protections under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act for companies that have engaged in censoring or political conduct.

Section 230 largely exempts online platforms from liability for content posted by their users, although they can be held liable for content that violates anti-sex trafficking or intellectual property laws.

The law allows companies to block or screen content “in good faith” if they consider it “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.” The protections, however, weren’t intended to apply to services that act more like publishers than online platforms, outgoing Attorney General William Barr said in a speech in May. (Read more.)

 

From The Dan Bongino Show:

Now, many people might pan this idea because Trump is pursuing it because he believes he was cheated out of victory in the election. However, whatever you think about that, this would be a good idea. That’s because there is undeniably a great deal of concern about whether we just had a fair election. That’s why every claim of fraud that’s out there should be put in front of a judge. It’s also why a special counsel could help clear things up. It’s a win/win proposition. If fraud is found, fixing that should be one of our highest priorities. If fraud isn’t found, then a special counsel could help restore confidence that our elections are honest. That’s also very important because ultimately, you can’t have a functional republic if people believe the elections are rigged. That’s why whatever the special counsel came up with, it would be good for the country. (Read more.)

 

From The Western Journal:

The Western Journal is presenting this memorandum, written by two prominent conservative legal scholars, essentially verbatim, with only enough editing to format it for the Op-Ed section of our website. This is the second memo by Messrs. Olson and McSweeney to be published exclusively by The Western Journal, and it, like the first, outlines a possible legal strategy for the Trump campaign to follow in the coming weeks. Prior to its publication here, it was sent to President Trump. — Ed. note

 In refusing to hear Texas v. Pennsylvania, the U.S. Supreme Court abdicated its constitutional duty to resolve a real and substantial controversy among states that was properly brought as an original action in that Court. As a result, the Court has come under intense criticism for having evaded the most important inter-state constitutional case brought to it in many decades, if not ever. (Read more.)

More HERE.

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It Took a Global Pandemic...

 From Paper City:

Generation Xers are generally pragmatic, independent and resourceful. We don’t require a lot of hand holding. As Cold War kiddos, our duck and cover drills had more purpose. They were not only to prepare for a possibility of a tornado ― we also needed to identify our nearest nuclear fallout shelter. . . you know, just in case.

Waiting in lines is no problem for us. We spent plenty of time chillin’ in the back of a station wagon or suburban (long before seat belt laws went into effect), waiting in those endless gas lines with our parents in the late-seventies. We queued up in lines that snaked through parking lots, and around buildings, just to score tickets to Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.

Gen Xers have limited expectations too. We were completely satisfied to play with our Pet Rocks (which was literally just a rock), or the world’s first video game, Pong (literally a dot on the screen, moving between two cursors). The first generation of “gamers” we cut our teeth on joystick games like Frogger, Pac Man and Galaga. In other words, we are pretty easily entertained. (Read more.)

From American Greatness:

There have been societal effects from these closures that show both the good and the bad in our culture. Many question how we as a nation were so quickly willing to give up our liberties. Others find it to be a political occurrence and praise it. Others in the middle wonder how elected officials have become so tone-deaf that they can stand at a podium and destroy their friends’ and neighbors’ lives, knowing they themselves will walk away from the cameras and the press with their jobs. They also wonder whether these elected officials have ever sat with a restaurant owner who has laid off the staff, is struggling to make ends meet and is on the brink of closing forever.

People have also turned against one another — hollowed-out souls on social media who scold those they think aren’t doing everything by the book, often reporting them to authorities as well.

Small businesses, including restaurants and gyms, have been hit particularly hard by pandemic shutdowns. An economic impact report released by Yelp three months ago tracked business closures through Yelp’s customer review listings and found that nearly 100,000 businesses had permanently closed from March 1 to Aug. 31. At that time, about 66,000 others were temporarily closed. One can imagine the permanent closures will have grown. (Read more.) 

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Ancient Diets

 From Inverse:

By digging into what these ancient peoples ate, the paper provides a window onto the past, revealing how ancient human societies, separated by great distances, communicated with one another with food — and the individuals responsible for driving the changing, expanding palates.

Lebanese cuisine today features Sfouf, a turmeric cake. Ras el hanout, a spice blend that also includes turmeric, is one of the flavors most associated with Levantine cuisine. Entire shops are dedicated to sesame-based halva. And what would a falafel wrap be without tahini?

"Only now we have become sufficiently aware that food was an important part of this early globalization — very similar to our present-day situation, where food is one of the most global goods!" Stockhammer says. (Read more.)

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The Bury St Edmunds Christmas Riots of the 1640s

We should never take Christmas for granted, since there have been times and places where it was banned. Puritan England was one such place. Charles I may have asked for fasting, but he would never have banned Christmas. From Dr. Francis Young:

As far as most Puritans were concerned, Christmas was a superstitious observance of times and seasons that belonged in the dark Catholic past (although it was not until 1647 that Parliament formally ‘banned Christmas’ by statute). One way in which Parliament wanted to send the message that Christmas was an ordinary day like any other was by compelling shops to open on Christmas Day. This became the focus of the unrest in Bury St Edmunds, where on 25 December 1644 apprentice boys ran riot, smashing the open wooden shutters of any shop that dared open on Christmas Day (this was in the days when most shops literally ‘opened’ by lowering a suspended wooden shutter into the street, where shopkeepers would display their wares). Apprentice boys were traditionally associated with festive misrule such as mummers’ plays, so it is not especially surprising that they were leaders of the riot – not to mention the fact that the abolition of Christmas meant that they got no day off!

In response to the imposition of the Puritan ‘Directory of Public Worship’ to replace The Book of Common Prayer in 1646, there was a further riot in Bury. Apprentice boys assembled to force shops to close, and when ordered to disperse by a magistrate and constables, scuffles broke out. However, the authorities managed to put down the disorder. A pamphlet of the time reported that the ‘bloody designs’ of the ‘malignant party … against the people of God, and the members of Jesus Christ … were frustrated, [and] their mischievous design, in case that any one of them should presume to open their shops on Christmas Day, and to that end had prepared divers weapons for the execution of the same’. But a further riot broke out the next year, in 1647.

In retrospect, these later riots had more ominous overtones, since May 1648 would see the eruption of an actual armed rebellion against Parliamentarian rule in the town focussed on May Day, another traditional holiday. As the initial enthusiasm for Parliamentarian rule waned, Royalist sympathisers among the West Suffolk gentry were getting bolder in subverting the new order; perhaps the only reason serious violence did not erupt at Christmas 1646 was that the middle of winter is not the best time to launch a rebellion…

Bury St Edmunds was not the only town where pro-Christmas riots occurred in the 1640, but its unrest was among the most prominent in the country. These incidents are historically important because they illustrate the extent to which towns like Bury – apparently deep in solidly Parliamentarian territory – remained bitterly divided right the way through the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. (Read more.)

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Christmas and "Little Women"

 All the film renditions of Alcott's novel are lovely to watch at Christmas. From Vogue:

The first snow has fallen. The end-of-year sentimentality is steadily welling up (this year more than ever). There’s only one thing to do now: Watch Little Women (2019). I specify the date because, as Little Women-philes know, there is a long tradition of Louisa May Alcott adaptations, catalogued by their dates and/or their Jos and Lauries. There’s 1994 (Wynona Ryder, Christian Bale); 1949 (June Allyson, Peter Lawford, with an honorable mention for Elizabeth Taylor as Amy); and a Katharine Hepburn as Jo incarnation in 1933. But it is director Greta Gerwig’s Little Women (2019), also known as the Saoirse Ronan–Timothée Chalamet version, that has become an instant, Christmas-adjacent classic.

There are Christmas movies and there are movies that are Christmas-adjacent—films that evoke the holidays without being so terribly on the nose about it. Gerwig’s Little Women contains overt Christmasness, of course: Boughs bedeck practically every mantel of the March home; the sisters give their Christmas breakfast to the less-fortunate Hummel family (only to be gifted a Marie Antoinette–style spread by their moneyed neighbor James Lawrence). The following Christmas, Amy (the resplendent, Oscar-nominated Florence Pugh) strings popcorn and Mr. March (Bob Odenkirk, whose casting is the only bad thing about this movie) returns from the Civil War.

But even when it’s not literally December 25—the day Little Women (2019) premiered last year to great fanfare—Christmassy magic infuses the entire film. The jubilant Alexandre Desplat score helps, along with crackling fires, fields of snow in Concord, Massachusetts, buoyant curly hair, houndstooth coats, frequent dance parties, and nonstop drama. Sure, The Family Stone is cool, but nothing beats your bitchy little sister lighting your novel in progress on fire, then later taking your place as your rich aunt’s companion to Paris, where she proceeds to get with the beautiful man whose proposal you just turned down. I’m willing to forgive the presence of Better Call Saul, because the casting of said rich aunt—Meryl Streep as Aunt March—never, ever gets old, and I’ve seen this movie three times now. (What is Christmastime without a salty aunt who tells you everything you don’t want to hear?) (Read more.)

 

My review of the film, HERE.

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Yes, It Was a Stolen Election

 From Frontpage Mag:

While President Trump was granting interviews on a daily basis to friendly and hostile media outlets alike, and was holding campaign rallies that drew tens of thousands of passionate supporters, Joe Biden, for the most part, remained locked away inside his basement, rarely even agreeing to give brief video interviews. On the few occasions when Biden did take part in interviews, he was typically disoriented, incoherent, and seemingly exhausted. And when he held “rallies,” they were invariably awkward, uninspired events mired in pessimistic rhetoric and attended only by tiny handfuls of people.[10] Common sense tells us that no candidate so pathetically inept and so deeply unappealing, could possibly have inspired 15.4 million more people to vote for him, than had voted for Democrat icon Barack Obama in 2012.[11]

Late on Election Night – November 3, 2020 -- President Trump led Biden by approximately 100,000 votes in Wisconsin, 300,000 votes in Michigan, 300,000 votes in Georgia, and 700,000 votes in Pennsylvania. Then, suddenly, all four of these states suspended their vote counts, almost simultaneously. By the early-morning hours of the following day, Wisconsin had flipped in Biden’s favor, followed by Michigan soon thereafter. A few days later, Georgia and Pennsylvania followed suit as well.[12]

President Trump received more votes than any previous incumbent seeking re-election, and he increased his 2016 vote total by 11 million -- the third largest rise ever achieved by an incumbent. By contrast, President Obama had comfortably won re-election in 2012 with 3.5 million fewer votes than he had received in 2008.[13] Biden in 2020 won only 17% of all counties nationwide, a record low.[14] According to exit polls, 95% of Republicans voted for Trump. Moreover, black support for Trump grew by 50% above its 2016 level, while Biden’s black support fell well below 90%.[15] Trump also increased his share of the national Hispanic vote from 29% in 2016, to 35% in 2020.[16]

Trump easily won Florida, Ohio and Iowa in 2020. Since 1852, the only presidential candidate to lose an election while winning these three states was Richard Nixon in 1960 – an outcome that was likely the result of election fraud by Democrats.[17]

Biden’s purported victory is due entirely to the fact that he seems to have overperformed specifically in the tiny handful of Democrat-run cities that provided him with narrow leads in each of the battleground states, and nowhere else. As The American Spectator puts it: “Biden [won] Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin because of an apparent avalanche of black votes in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee. Biden’s ‘winning’ margin was derived almost entirely from such voters in these cities, as coincidentally his black vote spiked only in exactly the locations necessary to secure victory. He did not receive comparable levels of support among comparable demographic groups in comparable states.”[18]

The Washington Examiner notes how strange it is that Trump could have lost the election even though “Republicans won all 27 House races [that] the Cook Political Report rated as ‘toss-ups’ in its 2020 election analysis, in addition to picking up 7 of the 36 seats the outlet rated as ‘likely Democrat’ or ‘lean Democrat.’”[19] Moreover, Democrats were unable to overturn even a single Republican seat in the House.[20] And in New Hampshire, Republicans seized control of both the state House and the state Senate, which had been firmly in Democrat hands.[21]

In a December 6 interview with Mark Levin on Fox News, pollster and Democracy Institute founder Patrick Basham said that if Biden was indeed the winner of the presidential election, he had defied key “non-polling metrics” in a way that may be “not statistically impossible, but it's statistically implausible.” Basham explained that there are “a dozen or more of these metrics ... [that] have a 100% accuracy rate in terms of predicting the winner of the presidential election,” including “party registration trends, how the candidates did in their respective presidential primaries, the number of individual donations, [and] how much enthusiasm each candidate generated in the opinion poll.”[22] Other notable variables are the candidates’ social media followings, their broadcast and digital media ratings, the number of online searches that their names generate, the number of small donors they have, and the number of individuals who are betting on them to win.[23] “In 2016,” said Basham, “[these metrics] all indicated strongly that Donald Trump would win against most of the public polling. That was again the case in 2020. So if we are to accept that Biden won against the trend of all these non-polling metrics, it not only means that one of these metrics was inaccurate ... for the first time ever, it means that each one of these metrics was wrong for the first time and at the same time as all of the others.”[24]

Noting also that “Donald Trump improved his national performance over 2016 by almost 20%,” Basham stated: “No incumbent president has ever lost a reelection bid if he's increased his [total] votes.”[25]

Because so many ballots were cast in 2020 by people voting by mail for the first time, most experts, using historical patterns as a guide, predicted a higher-than-usual rate of ballots being rejected for flaws such as missing information, inaccurate information, or a failure to place ballots in secrecy envelopes.[26] But precisely the opposite occurred in the battleground states:

• In Pennsylvania, a mere 0.03% of the state’s mail-in ballots were rejected in 2020 – a rate more than 30 times lower than the 2016 rejection rate of 1%.
• In Georgia, the rejection rate in 2020 was 0.2%, more than 30 times lower than the 6.4% figure from 2016.
• In Nevada, the 2020 rejection rate was approximately 0.75%, less than half the 1.6% rate from 2016.
• In North Carolina, the 2020 rejection rate was 0.8%, less than one-third the 2.7% rate from 2016.
• In Michigan, the 2020 rejection rate was 0.1%, about one-fifth the 0.5% rate from 2016.[27]

Citing what occurred in Pennsylvania, an Epoch Times report provides a partial explanation for these low 2020 rejection rates: “Election officials in [Pennsylvania’s] Democrat strongholds … exceeded their authority in order to give voters preferential treatment that wasn’t afforded to voters in Republican-leaning areas of the state. Specifically, election workers illegally ‘pre-canvassed’ mail-in ballots to determine whether they were missing a secrecy envelope or failed to include necessary information. When ballots were found to be flawed, voters were given an opportunity to correct, or ‘cure,’ their ballots to make sure they counted.”[28] (Read more.)

From The Epoch Times:

biggersmall

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said on Dec. 19 that he plans to challenge electoral votes when they are counted during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6.

“On January 6, I’m joining with the fighters in the Congress, and we are going to object to electors from states that didn’t run clean elections,” Gaetz told a crowd during the first day of Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit, held in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Republicans in Congress are considering whether to join the effort to challenge the 2020 general election results. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) initiated the push when he announced his intention to object to the electoral votes come January, while several other Republican lawmakers from both chambers have remained open to participating in the effort.

Objections during the joint session must be made in writing by at least one House member and one senator. If the objection meets the requirements, the joint session pauses and each house withdraws to its own chamber to debate the question for a maximum of two hours. The House and the Senate will then vote separately to accept or reject the objection, which requires a majority vote from both chambers.

If one chamber accepts and the other rejects, then according to federal law “the votes of the electors whose appointment shall have been certified by the executive of the State, under the seal thereof, shall be counted.”

Several Republican senators haven’t ruled out the possibility of objecting but have said that they would first monitor the developments regarding claims of voter fraud. Meanwhile, Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville (R.-Ala) has previously suggested that he may join the planned objection by members of the House of Representatives. (Read more.)

More HERE. 

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