Tea at Trianon: McConnell’s Absence Gives Trump’s Voter ID Push an Unexpected Opening

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, July 10, 2026

McConnell’s Absence Gives Trump’s Voter ID Push an Unexpected Opening

From The Daily BS:

President Donald Trump’s push for a nationwide voter ID and citizenship verification law remains stuck in the Senate, but one of its most persistent Republican opponents is suddenly off the field.

Sen. Mitch McConnell’s extended absence due to health issues has temporarily removed a reliable “no” vote from the equation, offering a small but politically significant break for supporters of the SAVE America Act. The Kentucky Republican has repeatedly bucked both Trump and much of the GOP conference on the legislation, helping stall one of the president’s signature election-security priorities.

The development does not solve the bill’s larger problem: Senate Democrats remain unanimously opposed, and Republicans still lack the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has made clear that he has no intention of detonating the chamber’s legislative filibuster to get the bill across the finish line.

“The only way you could get there is to undo or get rid of the legislative filibuster,” Thune said previously. “There aren’t even close to the votes here in the United States Senate in order to achieve that.” (Read more.)