Today, both a lawyer on NewsMax and legal-blogger shipwreckedcrew mentioned something Neo suggested a few days ago: impeaching someone who doesn't currently hold office to prevent him from holding future office may be an unconstitutional bill of attainder. One of the seminal SCOTUS cases on bills of attainder invalidated a bill which sought to prevent named individuals from holding government employment.

If Powell can't back up her allegations with factual evidence then she was lying to us and she should shut up. You constantly claim if someone said something that wasn't true, they must have been lying. For someone who has said as many untrue things as you have, that's an odd position to take.

Wouldn't that a "bill of attainder" Article I. Section IX, Clause III ? A rather interesting point. It would seem somewhat parallel to United States v. Lovett. (from Wikipedia) In United States v. Lovett, 328 U.S. 303 (1946), the Court confronted a federal law that named three people as subversive and excluded them from federal employment. Previously, the Court had held that lack of judicial trial and the narrow way in which the law rationally achieved its goals were the only tests of a bill of attainder. But the Lovett Court said that a bill of attainder 1) specifically identified the people to be punished; 2) imposed punishment; and 3) did so without benefit of judicial trial. As all three prongs of the bill of attainder test were met in Lovett, the court held that a congressional statute that bars particular individuals from government employment qualifies as punishment prohibited by the bill of attainder clause.

Can we still say "minstrel"? Followed by "boy" no less. "I'm not a minstrel boy, I'm a minstrel man!"

I like to look at this JOM thing from the other side: we're posting opinions he would find irksome on his blog. Sort of stickin' it to the Man.

The tune to the Minstrel Boy is used throughout John Huston's very entertaining film "The Man Who Would be King," based on the Rudyard Kipling story. The words to a different ballad are sung to it.

McTurtle says any Senate impeachment trial would occur after Jan 20. Schumer would run it. I think McConnell may be making a strategic point with this. Are the Democrats willing to delay approving Biden's cabinet nominees in order to conduct their political show trial?

I think that Olive Garden thing is fake. The part about revoking Sean Hannity's Endless Pasta Pass should have been a hint.

Anyone have a morse code book or a sort wave radio? Looks like we're going to need them. The only Morse code I know is SOS, but as luck would have it, that may be what's most needed.

Can you imagine the reaction if instead of breaking some windows and trespassing in the Capitol building the Trump supporters had burnt down a building?

By my reading of the pertinent section, they can do it any way they want: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to If they direct the SecState to do something, how is that unconstitutional? The legislature could have given the secretary of state the authority to change the election rules as he changed them, but they didn't. The changes made by the secretary of state were contrary to the election statutes. Also, it was misleading to the extent of being dishonest for you to say Texas lost 9-0 in the supreme court. Ducking the issue on standing grounds says nothing about the substance of the case.

In a 50/50 Senate, who is “majority” leader? Unfortunately, since it's decided by a vote, and since in the case of a tie, the vice president breaks the tie, it will be almost certainly be Schumer.

With that said Trump and his team of lawyers have been saying for weeks they have evidence of the fraud to include all the Dominion vote switching. I believe that in the phone call to Georgia's repulsive secretary of state, Trump and his lawyers specifically distanced themselves from the Dominion allegations.

In any event, I seemed to have joined in on the bickering, which wasn't my intention.

Thats not how civil wars or insurrections or color revolutions work. I'm not sure I catch your meaning. That's sort of how the first civil war worked -- brother against brother and all that.

Trump is still fighting. With the Democrats now in full control of Congress maybe this will convince the RINOs in Congress as well as the GOP state legislatures to decertify the fraudulent elections. The hope that Trump will at the last minute pull out a victory, and still be president come January 19th is only slightly less unlikely than a civil war. I believe there was significant fraud in the election, and it was very likely enough to change the results; but unless there's ironclad proof, that imbecile Joe Biden will be the next president, and honestly (as much as it pains me to say it), I think that's how it should be. An election won by fraud is terrible enough, but even worse is an election reversed without proving fraud.

If the Democrats attempt to end the filibuster or pack the SCOTUS then that may be the final straw that triggers Civil War 2. I don't believe for one second there's going to be a civil war. That's just fatuous bluster. My sister's a Trump-hating liberal, and as annoying as her politics are, I have no plans to take up arms against her.

I can't believe the bickering and bantering going on on a night that could forever change the country. It's the end of the world, and I'm feeling fine?

I feel even worse than when Trump lost. At least when Trump lost, all was not lost. Now it may well be. The only thing that might prevent the Democrats getting everything they ever wanted, in ways that can never be reversed, is the hope that a few Democrats will stop the majority from doing away with the senate filibuster and packing the supreme court. It happened before, when FDR tried to pack the court, but today's Democrats are not the Democrats of FDR's era. They're all about power, and now that power is now within their grasp.

DeKalb just dropped a bunch of votes. Perdue still holds a minuscule lead. Warnock is marked a s winner. I can't tell you how angry and depressed I am.

There is only 117,000 votes left in DeKalb county I hope that's true, but the NewsMax map gives about 194,472 uncounted votes

Unfortunately -- horribly unfortunately -- DeKalb seems the be the county designated to perform the time-honored last-minute vote dump that give the victory to the Democrats; at least it will be if the percent-reported is correct.

I hope Ace enjoys the brave new world he doesn't care about.

Counties who haven’t submitted results are ALL REPUBLICAN I think the biggest problem is the DaKalb county, which is huge, five-to-one Democrat, and has only reported about 37% of their vote. Many of the Republican counties have tiny populations.

And maybe MJW can read large print when he gets back from TPM I suppose this is some kind of dig, but it's hard to be offended when I have no idea what it means.