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In the hope of making the post-presidential-election period less stressful and chaotic in 2024 than it was in 2020, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia have co-sponsored a bipartisan bill to strengthen and reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887. And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has announced his support of the bill.
But one far-right GOP senator who vehemently opposes the bill is Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Libertarian Andy Craig, known for his work with the Cato Institute, calls Cruz out in an op-ed published by the Daily Beast on September 30 and tears his arguments apart.
“The Senate Rules Committee took an important step Tuesday to avoid a repeat of the 2020 election crisis,” Craig explains. “The Committee, after making a few technical amendments, voted to send the Electoral Count Reform Act to the full Senate with strong bipartisan support. The bill was produced by a group of senators from both parties — led by Susan Collins and Joe Manchin — to overhaul the vague, crisis-prone Electoral Count Act of 1887. That’s the law that governs the process of casting and counting Electoral College votes.”
Craig continues, “It was this arcane statute, with its confusing lack of clarity and bad procedural mechanics, that was at the center of the attempt to overturn the election on January 6. Another bipartisan ECA reform bill — sponsored by Reps. Zoe Lofgren and Liz Cheney — was passed by the House last week. While differing on some details, the two bills are broadly similar, though the House version has attracted less Republican support.”
Craig notes that the Senate bill “has 11 Republican co-sponsors,” which is “enough to defeat a filibuster.” When Cruz came out against the bill, according to Craig, he “offered a confused and contradictory litany of justifications” that was “full of bad history, bad legal analysis, and a total repudiation of his own professed conservative principles.”
“Cruz blasted the Collins-Manchin bill as a ‘federal takeover’ of presidential elections, supposedly displacing the constitutional role of the states,” Craig writes. “He especially aimed his ire at fellow Republicans for supporting the bill. But confusingly, he also complained that the bill would prevent Congress from nullifying decisions made by state legislatures, state executive officials, state courts, and each state’s members of the Electoral College. In Cruz’s telling, Congress is supposed to have carte blanche to reject electoral votes for effectively any reason it sees fit. This is the exact opposite of the Constitution’s text and the intent of the Framers, whose primary goal in creating the Electoral College was to make sure Congress didn’t get to elect the president.”
Craig continues, “The joint session of Congress, presided over by the vice president as president of the Senate, is assigned only the narrow task of opening and counting the votes. Before that, Congress only has a very limited power to set the time of choosing electors and when they must cast their votes — in other words, defining when Election Day occurs in early November and when the Electoral College meets in December…. If anything amounts to a ‘federal takeover,’ it would be Congress deciding it gets to second-guess the states when it comes to their own election results.”
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'Dangerous escalation': Putin condemned over illegal annexation of Ukraine territories
September 30, 2022
Moscow's illegal annexation of four occupied regions of Ukraine—formally announced Friday by Russian President Vladimir Putin—is facing international condemnation, with peace advocates warning that it heightens the risk of nuclear war, thus making the need for swift and effective diplomacy even clearer.
In a ceremony at the Kremlin, Putin signed decrees to annex Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia—four Ukrainian territories wholly or partially controlled by Russian troops. Residents of those areas will "be our citizens forever," he said, claiming that this represents "the will of millions of people."
"The Russian action makes it even more essential that Washington and Moscow enter into direct talks to prevent the war from spreading and escalating into... a nuclear exchange that would destroy civilization."
However, the land grab, which is a violation of international law, comes after Moscow staged what critics called "sham" referendums in the occupied regions. Putin's Friday proclamation was made just hours after suspected Russian missile strikes killed at least 25 Ukrainians in a civilian convoy in Zaporizhzhia, which remains heavily contested.
"In this moment of peril, I must underscore my duty as secretary-general to uphold the Charter of the United Nations," U.N. chief António Guterres told journalists in New York City on Thursday after the Kremlin announced its plans to hold an annexation ceremony.
"The Charter is clear," said Guterres. "Any annexation of a state's territory by another state resulting from the threat or use of force is a violation of the principles of the U.N. Charter and international law."
"Any decision to proceed with the annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia," he continued, "would have no legal value and deserves to be condemned."
The move "cannot be reconciled with the international legal framework" and "stands against everything the international community is meant to stand for," he added. "It flouts the purposes and principles of the United Nations. It is a dangerous escalation. It has no place in the modern world. It must not be accepted."
Analysts have warned, as the Washington Post reported last week, that "annexing the territories could enable Moscow to label Ukrainian attacks on those regions as attacks on Russia itself, raising the threat of a retaliatory nuclear strike."
That's precisely what Moscow did on Friday.
According to Russian news agency TASS, "Russia will view strikes on its new territories as an act of aggression, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday."
"It will be nothing else," Peskov said in response to a question about whether Moscow will consider Ukrainian strikes on the annexed regions as attacks on Russia.
As the Post noted last week, "U.S. officials have indicated that the United States would continue to back the Ukrainian military if it tried to retake annexed land, and that an agreement that Ukraine would not strike Russian territory with U.S.-made weapons would not apply to illegally annexed areas."
On Friday, U.S. President Joe Biden unveiled a new round of sanctions targeting Russian government and military officials and their family members.
Nicholas Miller, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth who studies nuclear proliferation and nonproliferation policy, suggested on social media that Russia's annexation has created a no-win situation for Ukraine.
Accepting the annexation, he said, could help strengthen the precedent—which Putin argued Friday was first established by the U.S. at the end of World War II—that the threat of nuclear force can be used to dominate other countries, while resisting it could make it more likely that the invasion escalates into a direct conflict between nuclear-armed powers.
Russia's control of Zaporizhzhia is far from complete, with roughly a quarter of the region still in Ukraine's hands.
"The position of the United Nations is unequivocal," said Guterres. "We are fully committed to the sovereignty, unity, independence, and territorial integrity of Ukraine, within its internationally recognized borders, in accordance with the relevant U.N. resolutions."
"The so-called 'referenda' in the occupied regions were conducted during active armed conflict, in areas under Russian occupation, and outside Ukraine’s legal and constitutional framework," Guterres stressed. "They cannot be called a genuine expression of the popular will."
He warned that "any decision by Russia to go forward will further jeopardize the prospects for peace," adding that "it will prolong the dramatic impacts on the global economy, especially [for] developing countries, and hinder our ability to deliver lifesaving aid across Ukraine and beyond."
It is against this backdrop that anti-war advocates are insisting on the need for stronger diplomatic efforts, with the U.N. chief calling it "high time to step back from the brink."
"Now more than ever," said Guterres, "we must work together to end this devastating and senseless war and uphold the U.N. Charter and international law."
That message was echoed by foreign policy expert Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
In an essay published Friday, Lieven wrote that Russia's illegal acquisition of occupied Ukrainian territories "makes the present situation all the more dangerous, and direct talks between Washington and Moscow all the more urgent."
Putin's move "greatly complicates the search for an eventual peace settlement," Lieven noted, "as Ukraine and Western nations won't formally accept nor recognize the annexation."
"At the same time, once these territories have been officially accepted into Russia under the Russian constitution, it will be much more difficult for a future Russian government to give them up," he pointed out. "Nonetheless, barring the very unlikely prospect of a complete victory for either side, at some stage a ceasefire to end full-scale war will still be necessary."
Lieven continued:
Above all, the drastic nature of the Russian action makes it even more essential that Washington and Moscow enter into direct talks to prevent the war from spreading and escalating into a direct clash between the United States and Russia, which in the worst scenario could lead to a nuclear exchange that would destroy civilization.
The very fact that direct peace talks between Ukraine and Russia are now so difficult means that the Biden administration must assume greater responsibility for diplomatic efforts to contain and limit the conflict. Not to do so would essentially be abdicating its responsibility to protect the United States and the American people from threats to their very existence.
"This danger is in no sense hypothetical or speculative," Lieven argued. "Both before and during the war, the Biden administration has responded to Russia's aggressive moves by increasing its support to Ukraine. At every point, the Russian government has responded not by backing down, but by further escalating in turn."
"If this cycle of escalation continues unchecked," he added, "then the prospect of direct nuclear conflict between America and Russia will become an active probability."
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Trump-loving Senate candidate sues women who charged and arrested him for violating protection order
September 30, 2022
A U.S. Senate candidate in Vermont has sued the law enforcement officers involved with charging him for violating an abuse prevention order.
Kerry Raheb, of Bennington, is charged with one misdemeanor count of violating a protection order related to allegedly stalking a person who was moving an excavator from a road, and the independent Senate candidate started aggressively honking his horn and nearly hit the machine as he drove fast around it, reported the Burlington Banner.
The 54-year-old Raheb then stopped his vehicle and yelled "get off my property" to the person, who had been working on road maintenance, and shouted an obscenity at the worker, who told police he believed Raheb would hit the excavator with his car.
Raheb was placed under a temporary order for allegedly threatening the victim at least once, and the alleged violation could result in a maximum sentence of one year of imprisonment and a possible $5,000 fine, if convicted.
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He also sought a stalking order against the victim in June, but that order remains pending.
Raheb sued the officer who arrested him in August, along with state's attorney who filed the charge and a trial judge -- all of whom are women -- in small claims court for $5,000 each.
“Slander and defamation is coming as you parrot the lies," Raheb told the newspaper in an email statement. "You have no clue what you are doing. Be guided accordingly.”
Raheb's campaign website shows his views on immigration, global elites, mask mandates, voter ID and "tyrannical politicians," along with quotes from former president Donald Trump and attacks on Sen. Bernie Sanders, another Vermont independent whom he calls an “American disgrace.”
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