Today's The Day

From the AP:

Presidential electors are meeting across the United States on Monday to formally choose Joe Biden as the nation’s next president.

Monday is the day set by law for the meeting of the Electoral College. In reality, electors meet in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to cast their ballots. The results will be sent to Washington and tallied in a Jan. 6 joint session of Congress over which Vice President Mike Pence will preside.

The electors’ votes have drawn more attention than usual this year because President Donald Trump has refused to concede the election and continued to make baseless allegations of fraud.

Locally, Representative Mike Kelly and (not-Representative Sean Parnell) have also refused to accept reality:

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Mr. Kelly’s emergency appeal to void the results of the Nov. 3 election in a one-sentence decision with no noted dissents from the court, which holds a 6-3 conservative majority after three justices were appointed by Mr. Trump.

Mr. Kelly’s case argues that an October 2019 state law that allowed “no-excuse” voting by mail, required an amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution. The suit sought to toss out some 2.6 million ballots cast by Pennsylvanians who requested a ballot without a reason, which would hand Mr. Trump the state’s electors.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected the case, reasoning that the plaintiffs should have challenged the law’s constitutionality long before votes had been cast. 

In the interview, Mr. Kelly insisted that the fight was not over. And on Saturday, he demonstrated that: A news release from his office said he again had gone to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the justices to consider the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s Act 77 “mail-in voting scheme.”

Good luck with that, Congressman Mike (and Not-Congressman Sean). 

If I may be so bold, it might be better for your future credibility for you to pull up your big boy pants accept your respective defeats as it's simply the honorable thing to do. 

You remember what "honorable" felt like, right?

Anyway, the public can track the votes at:

• The Washington Post

And if you're still among teh crazies who think the whole thing was stolen, you might want to read this. 

Suck it up and face reality. Today's the day the electors fulfill their constitutional duty and vote to make it official: Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States of America.

The Braintrust Gets It Wrong. Again.

On today's editorial page of the Tribune-Review we find:

Kudos to Pennsylvania Congressman Mike Kelly for leading the charge against the Obama administration's all-but-certain reversal on an odious United Nations gun treaty.

Even before Secretary of State John Kerry could suggest conditional support of the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, the Butler Republican, along with Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., organized opposition from at least 28 senators and 121 representatives.

And with very good reason.

“(W)hy would we ever sit down with bad actors and let them decide what our (gun) policy will be going forward?” asks Mr. Kelly. Especially when the United States already has some of the strictest statutes in the world on the import, manufacture and export of firearms, says Ted Bromund, a security policy expert at The Heritage Foundation.

That would be the same Heritage Foundation, of course, that's received (by my latest sifting of the numbers at the bridgeproject) almost $28 million from foundations controlled by the Trib's owner, Richard Mellon Scaife.  $28 million also turns out to be about 26% of the total foundation support received by Heritage.

Let me put it another way: More than a quarter of the foundation support The Heritage Foundation has received over the years has come from one man: Richard Mellon Scaife, owner of the Tribune-Review, employer of whomever wrote the above editorial - the one that omits the boss' financial entanglement with the think tank being quoted.

Enough of that, what about Representative Kelly and this treaty?  Representative Kelly has introduced a resolution:

Expressing the sense of Congress regarding the conditions for the United States becoming a signatory to the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, or to any similar agreement on the arms trade.

Included in the resolution is:

Whereas the Arms Trade Treaty poses significant risks to the national security, foreign policy, and economic interests of the United States as well as to the constitutional rights of United States citizens and United States sovereignty;

Whereas the Arms Trade Treaty fails to expressly recognize the fundamental, individual right to keep and to bear arms and the individual right of personal self-defense, as well as the legitimacy of hunting, sports shooting, and other lawful activities pertaining to the private ownership of firearms and related materials, and thus risks infringing on freedoms protected by the Second Amendment;

Turns out this is completely incorrect.  How do I know this?  From the Preamble of the Treaty being negotiated:

The States Parties to this Treaty,

Guided by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations,

Recalling that the Charter of the United Nations promotes the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security with the least diversion for armaments of the world’s human and economic resources,

Underlining the need to prevent, combat and eradicate the illicit trade of conventional arms and to prevent their diversion to the illicit market and for unauthorized end use,

Recognizing the legitimate political, security, economic and commercial rights and interests of States in the international trade of conventional arms,

Reaffirming the sovereign right and responsibility of any State to regulate and control transfers of conventional arms that take place exclusively within its territory, pursuant to its own legal or constitutional systems, [Italics in original.]

See those last two?  The ones starting with "Recognizing..." and "Reaffirming..."?

Then there's this part from a few paragraphs later:

Taking note of the legitimate trade and use of certain conventional arms, inter alia, for recreational, cultural, historical and sporting activities and lawful ownership where such ownership and use are permitted and protected by law, [Italics in original.]

Now go back and read what Representative Kelly is concerned enough about to mention in his resolution.  How silly does it sound now?

I guess he and his co-resolutionists never got as far as the Preamble when they read the treaty (a necessary step, one would presume if one is writing a Congressional Resolution against it).

Perhaps they did read it and just didn't understand it.

Which one makes them all look sillier?

I'll let you decide.