No Purging. Constitutional Obligation and Right In Furtherance Of Domestic Tranquility. RIP Rush.

 

Rush Limbaugh has passed away and America is less safe.

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Texas "cold " analysis:

Texas Cold’Em: Power Outages Are Political

Neither the blackouts nor their fixes teach anything useful about climate risks.

By  Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

Nine times Dallas has recorded daily snowfalls of 4 inches or more since 1940, but this week’s may be the first to be attributed to man-made climate change.

You ask, How do we know climate change is responsible? Answer: Shut up, denier.

Likewise because the weather inflicted painful blackouts on millions of voters, politicians hinted that market manipulation by energy traders may play a role. These manipulators will never be found. But shut up about that too.

Folks in the Northeast accustomed to weeklong outages may be surprised when Texans mostly have their power back in hours. Hundreds of downed power lines aren’t the problem as they are elsewhere. Texas winter blackouts come wholesale when generating plants trip offline due to conditions that will quickly be remedied when temperatures return to the 50s and 60s this weekend.

In fact, Texas has plenty of generation to keep its system from cracking even under summer air-conditioning demand, and more than enough in principle for a winter cold snap. Texas’s grid operator pledged to get to the bottom of why 34,000 megawatts nevertheless dropped offline, but we already know the answer because the same thing happened in 2011 and 1989.

Wind-power blades aren’t protected against icing. Coal, nuclear and gas-fired power plants in Texas are designed to shed heat rather than to protect against rare episodes of extreme cold. Winterization is the term for the investments politicians, operators and ratepayers have been reluctant to make because they are seldom needed.

Like much of the country, Texas has also increased its reliance on natural gas, in short supply when households suddenly crank up heating demand. Thanks to the Clean Air Act, pipeline compressors run on electricity now rather than natural gas. So blackouts meant to conserve electricity can actually reduce it, by knocking gas-burning generators offline.

Operating any large industrial system is harder when subjected to conflicting political aims. Always these have the effect of driving resiliency out.

To the horror of many, the Trump administration insisted on calling attention to a specific new vulnerability created by our accelerating reliance on natural gas to keep prices low while curbing emissions. A coal plant might keep 90 days of fuel on hand. A nuclear plant needs refueling every two years. Gas-fired power plants have no such supply buffer. They depend on just-in-time fuel delivery.

Texas is the victim this time. New England, whose politicians have consistently resisted new pipelines even as reliance on gas has grown willy-nilly, is one polar vortex away from outages that could drag on for weeks.

A textbook used by many universities is Peter Z. Grossman’s aptly titled “U.S. Energy Policy and the Pursuit of Failure.”

Since the 1970s “energy crisis,” decisions that were once treated as technical and economic in nature have become absorbed into the political circus. Take Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York. To fend off ultraliberal challengers, he must be seen promoting wind and solar while stiff-arming natural gas. Yet his state’s grid manager issues voluminous reports pointing to the urgent necessity of new gas plants to support the intermittency of wind and solar.

The Green New Deal favored by Democrats, in this light, is not an energy revolution, but a culmination of energy politics. Its sky-high ambitions would quickly be scuttled by voters if they ever saw what it really entailed. The plan can only be a non-model for the fast-growing countries whose emissions will actually determine the climate future. But as checklist for pleasuring organized interests in the Democratic coalition, it’s nonpareil.

Meanwhile, the nostrum favored by serious economists, a carbon tax, has become anathema to green activists. They wouldn’t put it this way, but a tax on carbon represents so undramatic an adjustment as to be impossible to reconcile with the climate catastrophism they preach.

Ban fossil fuels. Ban capitalism. Green politics has become addicted to something that is the opposite of progress on climate policy: wedge politics built around unreconcilable us-vs.-them differences that can be taken to the voting booth decade after decade.

After 40 years, the anointed climate authorities haven’t been able to settle key uncertainties, such as whether an expected doubling of atmospheric CO2 will lead to a temperature increase of 2.7 or 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit. We don’t know. But no sociological uncertainty exists about something else: Green activists would behave very differently if they were truly concerned about a world barreling toward some kind of climate crisis. By their behavior, they care more about the empire of pork and status they’ve been erecting within our political culture than they do about rational progress on the climate puzzle.

And:

No purging Trump:

The GOP Won’t Purge Trump

The rank and file don’t see him as a liability, and his supporters are dug in.

By  William A. Galston

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered a stinging speech immediately after President Trump was acquitted in his Senate trial over the weekend. The speech has been seen as the opening salvo in Mr. McConnell’s effort to marginalize Mr. Trump’s influence in the Republican Party. It will be an uphill battle.

A Quinnipiac survey released on Monday found that only 11% of Republicans held Mr. Trump responsible for inciting the violence on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6. A mere 9% supported conviction. Only 16% would support even the symbolic rebuke of a censure motion. Not only do 87% of Republicans believe Mr. Trump should be allowed to hold office again; 75% want him to play a “prominent role” in the Republican Party.

What does such a role entail? A recent Gallup survey found that 68% of Republicans want the former president to remain their party’s leader. According to an Axios-Ipsos poll, 66% of Republicans believe that their party is better with Mr. Trump in it, and 57% favor him as their party’s 2024 presidential candidate. These sentiments may change over time. But for now, efforts to weaken Mr. Trump’s influence within the party will not succeed.

If anything, the opposite seems more likely. State and county Republican Party organizations across the country are censuring elected officials who broke with Mr. Trump to support his impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate. The Trump base has anathematized even Trump loyalists such as former Vice President Mike Pence, who honored their oath of office. These supporters will not countenance anything short of unswerving fealty to Mr. Trump.

 No doubt there are differences within the Republican Party between Trump supporters and party regulars. According to NBC, 87% of Trump supporters have “very positive” views of the former president, a sentiment shared by only 44% of party regulars.

Then again, a survey designed by Henry Olsen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center suggests there may not be as much daylight between these groups as is commonly assumed. Both overwhelmingly believe that government does too much, that taxes and spending should be reduced, that immigration should be lower, and that a border wall should be built. They are united on social issues such as abortion, the Second Amendment, religious liberty, same-sex marriage and strong policing. Surprisingly, they agree that foreign trade helps the country and that alliances help keep us safe.

Overwhelming majorities of Trump supporters and party regulars alike believe that although America is the greatest country on earth, too many Americans are losing faith in the ideas that made us great. Christianity, essential to American greatness, is under attack, and these Americans say they don’t feel free to express their opinions in public.

There are some differences. Forty-three percent of Trump supporters deny that climate change is real, compared with only 17% of Republicans. Although they both believe that minorities have a “mostly fair” chance to succeed, 46% of Republicans say that racism is a “real and serious” problem, compared with 24% of Trump supporters. Trump supporters express deeper antipathy to Muslims, feminists and Hollywood.

This is the fundamental divide: Compared with Republicans generally, Trump supporters are more fervent and more unyielding, and their political beliefs are more central to their personal identity. NBC found that only 25% of them support compromising with President Biden, compared with 55% of party regulars. According to Mr. Olsen’s survey, 73% of Republicans think that working with Democrats would be a good thing, a proposition rejected by a majority of Trump supporters.

This brings us to the heart of the matter. Sixty-one percent of Trump supporters, but only 38% of Republicans, believe that Democrats are mostly bad people whose ideas would destroy the country. How can you compromise with such a group? For Trump Republicans, every electoral contest is a do-or-die “Flight 93” election, in which success must be achieved by any means possible.

Some establishment Republicans have concluded that their party had a winning message in 2020 but the wrong messenger. I am not so sure. Mr. Trump’s message cannot easily be distinguished from the persona his followers cherish—the fearless oppositionist who channels their resentments and never backs down.

By giving no quarter to liberals and progressives, Mr. Trump moves his supporters off the moral defense and allows them to say what they were long told wasn’t supposed to be said. He assures them that their anger is legitimate, their cause is righteous, and restraint in pursuit of this cause is no virtue. Could Trumpism without Trump do this?

Finally:

I take issue with a brilliant lawyer because I believe Congress has the constitutional right and responsibility to demand, with respect to the election of the president and vice president,  states have their votes counted and submitted on such date Congress dictates in order to have a systematic vote count under Article 2, Section 1 and in futherance of domestic tranquility. 

I agree that the states have control over the mechanism and regulations  of their election laws.

An Unconstitutional Voting ‘Reform’

Democrats want to impose federal rules on elections for president. Congress doesn’t have that power.

By  David B. Rivkin Jr. and Jason Snead

House Democrats have made election “reform” their top legislative priority. House Resolution 1, styled the For the People Act, would vitiate existing state election laws, federalize the rules of congressional and presidential elections, and effectively do the same for state elections, which are often conducted on the same ballot. Critics have noted that the proposed rules are designed to benefit Democrats. They’re also unconstitutional.

The key problem is that the Constitution doesn’t give Congress the authority to regulate all federal elections in the same way. Congress has significant power over congressional elections. The Elections Clause of Article I, Section 4 provides that state legislatures “shall prescribe” the “times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives,” but also authorizes Congress to “make or alter such regulations.”SUBSCRIBE

Yet Congress has only limited authority over the conduct of presidential elections. They are governed by the Electors Clause in Article II, Section 1, which provides: “Congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the United States.” Congress’s timing determination is binding on the states, as the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held last year in Carson v. Simon, which rejected Minnesota’s modification of its ballot-receipt deadline. (The Honest Elections Project sponsored the litigation, and Mr. Rivkin was the plaintiffs’ lead attorney.)

But the Electors Clause gives state legislatures plenary power over the manner of selecting presidential electors. It does not permit lawmakers to promulgate a comprehensive federal elections code. Nor does the 15th Amendment, which bars racial discrimination in voting, or the other amendments extending the franchise. Each grants Congress the power to enforce its guarantees through “appropriate legislation.” But as the Supreme Court explained in City of Boerne v. Flores (1997), “Congress does not enforce a constitutional right by changing what the right is.” None of these amendments guarantee the right to vote in any particular way—such as by mail versus in person—so Congress can’t rightly be said to be enforcing them through H.R.1. And none of them repeal the Electors Clause.

 Although all 50 state legislatures have provided for popular election of presidential electors, the legislatures could change state law and appoint electors directly. H.R.1 violates the Electors Clause on its face, purporting to govern not merely the time, place and manner of congressional elections, but also regulating presidential elections in exactly the same prescriptive manner as congressional elections.

The profound difference between the Electors Clause and the Elections Clause was no accident. The 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia considered many possible methods of choosing the chief executive: direct popular election, selection by one or both houses of Congress, even a vote of state governors. Ultimately, delegates settled on a college of electors, chosen in a manner to be determined by the legislature of each state, to avoid the president’s selection by Congress. As Pennsylvania’s Gouverneur Morris said at the convention, “if the Executive be chosen by the [national] legislature, he will not be independent [of] it; and if not independent, usurpation and tyranny on the part of the legislature will be the consequence.”

Another delegate, South Carolina’s Charles Pinckney, explained later: “In the Federal Convention great care was used to provide for the election of the president of the United States independently of Congress; to take the business as far as possible out of their hands.” Congress, Pinckney continued, “had no right to meddle with it at all.” The only exception is that the House chooses the president if no candidate commands an Electoral College majority.

The Supreme Court has recognized state legislatures’ primacy in regulating presidential elections. In McPherson v. Blacker (1892), the justices upheld Michigan’s apportionment of presidential electors by congressional district, holding that the Constitution “leaves it to the [state] legislature exclusively to define the method” of appointing electors. Subsequent rulings have adhered to that principle. In Burroughs v. U.S. (1934), the court held that Congress’s authority is limited to enacting laws that don’t “interfere with the power of a state to appoint electors or the manner in which their appointment shall be made.”

The court restated this principle as recently as 2000, holding unanimously in Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board that the Florida Supreme Court couldn’t change state election laws on its own authority, without action by the Legislature.

Even if lawmakers cured the constitutional deficiency of H.R.1 by applying it only to congressional elections, it would still be bad policy. Voting systems are vast and complex. Even minor, well-intentioned changes can have significant unintended consequences. Few know this better than election officials themselves. According to a recent report by Pennsylvania’s county commissioners, “uncertainty regarding court challenges” and “confusion because of ever-changing guidance” from Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar contributed to the November delays and problems experienced by counties across the commonwealth. It took Philadelphia two weeks to count 700,000 ballots.

By contrast, Florida has spent two decades bolstering its election system after the debacle of 2000. The Sunshine State processed 11 million ballots in November and reported accurate results on election night. More states should be doing what Florida does.

But H.R.1 would put Florida’s success at risk. Its law requires voters to show identification and return absentee ballots by Election Day, bans organized ballot trafficking, and requires that voters cure problems with their mail-in ballots no later than two days after an election. Common-sense measures like these help the state deliver honest elections with prompt and accurate results even in the face of a pandemic. For H.R.1’s drafters, though, these are instruments of “voter suppression.” The bill would dilute or prohibit all these measures.

Keeping states in charge of elections also limits the damage when policy changes fail. States can experiment with voting improvements, learn from missteps, and replicate successes. Not so with a one-size-fits-all system. Any troubles caused by a national voting law will instantly affect all 50 states, none of which will have the freedom to correct them. Imposing unconstitutional voting changes on the whole nation would politicize the machinery of democracy and risk permanently tainting the credibility of elections.

Mr. Rivkin practices appellate and constitutional law in Washington. He served in the White House Counsel’s Office and Justice Department under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Mr. Snead is executive director of the Honest Elections Project.

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