Stephan: This is the unvarnished reality of Associate Justice Samuel Alito. Here, he literally speaks for himself. This is the kind of man Republicans place on the Supreme Court.
Conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito prompted stark warnings from legal scholars about the politicization of the nation’s highest court after he aired a laundry list of conservative grievances during a Thursday speech before the Federalist Society.
Alito, who was appointed to the bench by former George W. Bush, addressed the annual conference held by the Federalist Society, the shadowy dark-money conservative group which has bankrolled and guided President Donald Trump’s deeply conservative judicial picks, via Zoom.
The justice made unusually incendiary remarks about contraception, coronavirus restrictions and the threat he believes religious freedom faces from advocates of same-sex marriage. Alito claimed that the court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which effectively legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, bred intolerance for those who believe marriage is a union between one man and one woman.
“Until very recently, that’s what the vast majority of Americans thought,” he said. “Now, it’s considered bigotry.”
Alito also downplayed a controversial case in which a Colorado baker refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, arguing that the pair won the support of “celebrity chefs” […]
RYAN HEATH , Author of Global Translations, POLITICO’s global newsletter and podcast - Politico
Stephan: Biden like Obama before him is going to inherit a painfully diminished country. Only this time it is much worse. Trump's financial policies, foreign policies, personal integrity, and policy decisions have all failed and wounded us grievously in the process, but advanced and enriched him personally. It is the path of Moussolini as Ruth Ben Ghiat points out in her book, Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present. And it is going to take years to repair was has happened over the past four years. Even if Biden is a wonderful success, international leaders will always think they can no longer rely on America's reliable consistency, because they have just witnessed one narcissistic Republican grifter come to power and with the support of his party completely change America, making her a kind of national grifter, non longer reliable. How can they ever be sure it won't happen again? Don't you think that is what you would think about?
Christopher Ingraham, Reporter - The Washington Post
Stephan: Anyone who does not live in the fact-free Trumper bubble can see the explicit and unashamed activities by Republicans all geared to sabotaging American democracy. As this article describes the United States is now a nation with an authoritarian government on the level of Turkey or Hungary. But the scariest aspect of this is that millions of Americans voted for thugs, QAnon supporters, and open racists. I want to be optimistic about the future but it is getting harder and harder. We are so close to the end of the dream of the Founders. I am no longer clear that we will get through the next 70 days as a democracy.
Mitch McConnell
In Georgia, two GOP senators called on the state’s Republican secretary of state to resign, alleging irregularities and mismanagement without offering evidence. Only four of 53 Senate Republicans have congratulated Biden on his projected victory. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin recently told reporters “there’s nothing to congratulate [Biden] about,” while Missouri’s Roy Blunt said the president “may not have been defeated at all.”
It’s the latest sign of the party’s lurch away from democratic ideals and practices, a shift that predates Trump but one that has accelerated precipitously since. Now, according to data released by an international team of political scientists just before the Nov. 3 election, it’s possible to quantify the extent to which the Republican Party no longer adheres to such principles as the commitment to free and fair elections with multiple parties, the respectful treatment of political opponents and the avoidance of violent rhetoric.
“The Republican Party in the U.S. has retreated from upholding democratic norms in recent years,” said Anna Lührmann, a political scientist at the University of Gothenburg in […]
Stephan: Here are the facts about the election, let no one think that any of what Trump and his allies are doing is based on facts. It is all an attempt to sabotage American democracy.
“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” a statement from a Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency official said. Credit: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
The statement from a high-ranking official at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency amounted to a strong rebuke of President Trump’s baseless assertion that the election had been stolen from him. A growing chorus of Republican senators have said that President-elect Joe Biden should receive intelligence briefings.
