Maricopa has applied for sanctions against Lake. The filing is appropriately pissed off.

Meanwhile Lake is spreading conspiracy theories against the judge. Genius, right?

https://twitter.com/yvonnewingett/status/1607415604406788096

I'm reminded of Robert Bolt's Thomas More on giving the Devil benefit of law.

"And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!"

As much as we want horrible people punished for horrible things, we're all safer when the exceptions to the 1st amendment are specific and narrow. Because sometimes the horrible people are in power, too.

An excellent piece by Popehat (Ken White) explaining how limited and narrowly defined the exceptions to the first amendment actually are. While it doesn't directly focus on the point, it explains why so many of the horrible things Rs say aren't actually prosecutable under centuries of precedent.

https://popehat.substack.com/p/the-first-amendment-isnt-absolute

So Musk undid the measure - which he personally ordered - to remove the measures intended to help the suicidal.

He acts on bizarre malice, gets pilloried, then reverses. Chaos.

Lake, btw, is now escalating her deranged rhetoric and claiming she won by "400,000 to 500,000 votes."

Kelly won by ~125,000 votes, 5%. So she's claiming she won by 20 points in an election she lost by 17,000 votes.

To the surprise of no one sane, the judge just ruled against Kari "The Nutjob" Lake and her demand to be named the winner after losing.

I believe all 4 crazy suits challenging the AZ election results have now been dismissed or defeated. Three will be appealed, but none is going anywhere. And sanctions for frivolous litigation are on the table in all 4 cases.

Even Mitch is right when he's right.

And he at least has the sense to see that American and Ukrainian interests intersect. Cold self interest dictates the same as moral judgment in this case. But that's too much for MAGA. Their dictator worship and generally vileness override even national self interest.

WTAF... ?

Oh lordy. Putin slipped and referred to Ukraine as a "war."

Now an opponent is demanding he be investigated for violating his own law.

And credit where it's due: this wouldn't have happened without R support in the Senate and the direct support of McConnell.

Yes, he's awful, but he had the sense to see these weaknesses couldn't be allowed to stand.

Compare that to McCarthy, who denounced the reform at every step and whipped votes against it.

NB that top democracy defending lawyer Marc Elias had reservations about the ECA reform bills... until the end of the process.

He heavily praised D Senators for working tirelessly to fix what he saw as weaknesses, and declared himself "thrilled" with the final version.

It's a big win for the resiliency of democracy.

Wow. A video of the arctic front hitting the warm water in the Gulf... and generating steam.

Click through to see.

https://twitter.com/SaltwaterRecon/status/1606312371944796161

The House has just passed the omnibus spending bill... which also means they passed the urgently needed reform/clarification of the 1887 Electoral Count Act.

Another Jan 6 is now much harder... and there are now clear and specific legal mechanisms to deal with a rogue governor who refuses to certify a result, etc.

The election deniers never had the law on their side, but now that's much more explicit.

Well, when people asked "is there anything else Santos could have lied about?"... the answer was yes.

The orange stain is screaming for the zillionth time that the committee doesn't say he sent thousands of troops to the Capitol and that Pelosi refused them.

They don't mention it for the good reason that it's utterly insane.

Who knew the Speaker had command over the military? And that the then POTUS could send thousands of troops by repeatedly and openly refusing to send any at all?

Good effing god. Now Musk is demanding his ludicrous Twitter polls be taken as binding on the US government. Not elections, mind you, Twitter polls.

Tesla shares are down $274 from their peak earlier this year, nearly 70% down.

For Musk personally, with his 446 million shares, that's a loss of $122 BILLION.

A legitimate BFD, as our esteemed president once said. This reform makes it much harder for future elections to be stolen (and it already wasn't easy) or interfered with.