North Carolina Elections Board Claims it Has Power to Bar Rep. Madison Cawthorn From Running Over January 6th
“he engaged in the insurrection, which disqualifies him from office because it violates the 14th Amendment of the Constitution”
Democrats and their allies are trying to prevent Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) from running again and they’re using January 6th as an excuse. This has been going on for weeks.
It’s ridiculous and outrageous. Vice President Kamala Harris promoted a bail fund for people arrested during the Black Lives Matter/Antifa riots of 2020. Is she also disqualified?
Lexi Lonas reports at The Hill:
North Carolina elections board says it has power to bar Cawthorn from running over Jan. 6
The North Carolina elections board said in a court filing Monday it has the power to bar Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) from running for office over his actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
“The State does not judge the qualifications of the elected members of the U.S. House of Representative. It polices candidate qualifications prior to the elections,” the board wrote in a filing to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Cawthorn.
“In doing so, as indicated above, States have long enforced age and residency requirements, without question and with very few if any legal challenges. The State has the same authority to police which candidates should or should not be disqualified per Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the board added.
Cawthorn filed a lawsuit after a group of liberal activists began attempting to get him barred from office due to what they say were disqualifying actions leading up to the Capitol riot.
Leading up to the riot, Cawthorn repeated former President Trump’s false election fraud claims and spoke at a rally hours before the riot began. Opponents of Cawthorn say he engaged in the insurrection, which disqualifies him from office because it violates the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
Let me break this down for anyone who doesn’t understand what’s happening here. Madison Cawthorn supports Trump, therefore he must be destroyed. That’s it. You’re now up to date.
Oh wait, maybe there’s more to this story.
Katelyn Caralle reports at the Daily Mail:
GOP Rep. Madison Cawthorn introduces bill to have term limits in Congress to ‘drain the swamp’ as North Carolina electors try and get him thrown off the 2022 ticket
Madison Cawthorn, 26, is introducing term limit legislation on Capitol Hill that would restrict people to serving 24 years total in Congress.
The youngest member of Congress wants House members to only be able to serve six two-year terms and members of the Senate to be restricted to two six-year terms, according to a copy of the legislation revealed Wednesday.
The North Carolina Republican congressman is coming for some of the older members, claiming it’s time to ‘drain the swamp,’ – the phrase Donald Trump used in his 2016 campaign to promote his D.C. outsider status.
‘If you’re not able to accomplish your goals in over a decade, I really don’t want you to represent me anyway,’ he told Fox News, adding two dozen years is a ‘reasonable amount of time’ to make an impact.
Term limits is a great idea, but let’s focus on the bigger issue here. Democrats are trying to disqualify a Republican from running over January 6th.
Fine. May the same apply to every single Democrat who showed any support for BLM and Antifa throughout the months of riots in 2020. Do Democrats really want to have this discussion?
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Comments
Ignoring the minor detail that no one has been prosecuted for ‘insurrection’.
But such details are unimportant in a banana republic. In a functioning banana republic it is the duty of the ruling class to screen the candidates the peasants are allowed to ‘vote’ for.
For their own good. Because the peasants cannot be trusted to vote ‘correctly’. They are too stupid and ignorant. Especially when shadowy nefarious forces are spreading MDM (mis-, dis-, and malinformation) that undermines trust in the government the ruling class controls.
Especially since the ‘insurrection’ referee to is widely understood to be the American Civil War. Beyond that not at all trivial point, until he is convicted or confesses to being guilty of participating in an insurrection it’s a non starter. I presume the NC Board of elections would be upset were other boards to rule candidates ineligible under their own interpretation of insurrection but maybe we can find out if they persist.
JHogan, that nobody has been prosecuted for it is irrelevant. If it were actually an insurrection then they’d have a point, even if nobody was prosecuted. Even if the president pardoned them they’d still be ineligible. For instance several of the BLM/Antifa riots were undoubtedly insurrections, even though nobody was prosecuted for them. In this case it wasn’t an insurrection because it wasn’t, and had anyone been charged with insurrection it still wouldn’t have been one.
CommoChief, the amendment refers to any insurrection, not just the one that prompted its passage. The framers and ratifiers definitely intended it to apply to any future insurrection as well.
The thing is, though, that the last sentence of that section says “But Congress may by a vote of two thirds of each house remove such disability”, and in 1872 Congress did just that. So amendment 14.3 is of no effect. It’s cruft in the constitution, like the provision for “Indians not taxed”, a category that still legally exists but contains no people. So participants in CHAZ and the attack on the Portland courthouse and the Minneapolis police station remain eligible for Congress, and so would participants in the Jan-6 riot even had it been an insurrection, which it wasn’t.
Ask a former President about it. You can’t?
Huh? I don’t understand what you’re saying. Which former president should I ask, and why can’t I?
Because a Democrat shot him in the head at the Theatre?
But what would I ask him? I don’t see his relevance to this question.
To legally penalize someone don’t you think they deserve benefit of law first? How many actual examples of depriving people of something for insurrection without a conviction for that have happened in American history?
That said yet another reminder people elections have consequences, so next time you see the circular firing squad on our side ask “Do I want Democrat narratives to have force of law even when they are overt lies”.
That said I have zero sympathy for BLM, but the standard you stated could easily be applied in a highly abusive manner (as people are trying to do to Maddison Cawthorn).
What penalty? The only question here is a factual one; was it an insurrection or not (hint: it wasn’t). That does not depend on whether anyone was charged or penalized for it.
Being disqualified from the ballot is not a penalty, so there’s no need to charge him and try him first. For instance suppose he had in fact risen up against the USA, and the president pardoned him. There could be no criminal charges, but he’d still be ineligible for congress (if not for the 1872 amnesty). So what would you expect the board of elections to do?
The problem here is not that they deprived him of the benefit of law; he still has that. The problem is merely that the facts they allege are not true. So he can sue them, just as if they’d said he was a 24-year-old Peruvian.
Yes, disqualifying him IS a penalty. As a citizen and a resident of his State he has the right to run for elected office and they are trying to deny him that right. He must be given due process before he has a right stolen like that.
No, it is not a penalty, and your claiming it is one won’t make it so. It is the board of elections’s job to decide which candidates qualify to be on the ballot. The requirement that they not have engaged in insurrection (unless congress says they can run anyway, which it has) is just like the requirement that they be citizens, of age, and state residents. Keeping someone off the ballot for being an alien isn’t a penalty. So neither is keeping someone off for being an insurrectionist. But just as a citizen kept off as an alien can sue, so can someone falsely kept off as an insurrectionist.
How can the 1872 amnesty possibly apply to insurrections that haven’t happened yet?
Read it. By its plain language it applies to all insurrectionists, past and future, except for those it specifically excluded.
I just read it. “All persons whomsoever” means to me all persons who existed at the time the legislation was enacted and nobody else.
It doesn’t say that. It says all persons whomsoever. BLM insurrectionists from 2020 are “persons whomsoever”.
You don’t have to convince me that what BLM and Antifa did constitutes an insurrection, I think the DOJ should have charged accordingly. What you have to convince me of is that any citizen could or ought to have fundamental civil rights (their political rights are as fundamental as it gets) removed on the say so of beaurucrats with no due process simply because someone said they committed a crime (participating an insurrection is a felony) they did not get convicted of or even charged with.
Some beaurucrats declaring someone guilty of a crime and imposing any of the penalties for the crime on that person is the definition of what the constitution banned in the section on attainder
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-1/section-9/clause-3/bills-of-attainder
Constitution actually gives a legal definition of what a governing body doing extra-judicial punishment of someone for a crime they were never even convicted of is, it is
“If an act inflicts a milder degree of punishment than death, it is called a bill of pains and penalties”
It then bans such behavior immediately after defining it.
The context of that part of the constitution is Magna Carta which states
“No Free man shall be arrested, or imprisoned, or disseised (property taken), or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go against him, nor will we send against him, save by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land.”
Participation in an insurrection is a crime, giving someone only part of the penalty for that crime instead of all of it without due process of a trial is overtly banned by the constitution, and digging deeper into context of the framers of the constitution only makes it clearly applying any penalty for a criminal act requires a conviction.
I do agree there are other legal reasons including no insurrection, and the fact that the 1872 amnesty makes the relevant portion of the 14th irrelevant, but due process before having the penalties for a felony imposed couldn’t be a bigger impediment.
What you’re missing is that the section 14.3 disqualification is not part of the penalty for a crime. It’s a completely separate consequence of an act that may not even be chargeable as a crime (e.g. if the president pardoned someone; they’re still ineligible under 14.3 unless congress says otherwise).
No I am not.
If the constitution declared that shoplifters are ineligible for running for office you better believe you would have to be convicted of shoplifting before you got disqualified.
You seem to be laboring under a delusion that in this country it is the job of a small clique of beaurucrats to determine if you are guilty of a felony like participation in an insurrection it isn’t that is the sole domain of our court system.
The constitution explicitly bans all acts of attainder which is word for word what you have described.
Participation in an insurrection is once again a felony crime. There is only one source of power in this country the constitution permits to determine if such a crime has been committed and that is the court system.
The only people who could determine Maddison Cawthorn has participated in an insurrection according to our constitution is a jury of his peers unless he waves his right to trial by jury in which case it is a judge. Declaring someone guilty by a board of beaurucrats is not America, and nor do I want it to ever become America and if a war was to be fought over if the constitution ceases to ban attainder I would gladly die on the liberty side of that, we did not secede from the UK to keep acts of attainder.
For a TLDR version
“What you’re missing is that the section 14.3 disqualification is not part of the penalty for a crime.”
Provide proof that insurrection is legal or retract that lie. EVERY penalty for insurrection IS a penalty for a felony and can ONLY EVER be applied to someone the law determined committed the crime because the constitutional amendment banning attainder has never been repealed.
Consequences for a felony requires you be convicted of that felony, insurrection is not an exception it is just a felony the president can’t fully pardon.
Oh, I forgot the main point: Even if the Jan-6-2021 riot were a full-blown insurrection, and even if the Amnesty Act had never been passed, or had excluded future insurrections, Cawthorn would still not be ineligible for the simple reason that he did not participate in that event in any manner whatsoever.
He spoke at the rally, which was a 100% legal and constitutionally protected event. Congress can’t ban rallies, no matter what cause they’re promoting. Nor can it ban marching on the Capitol, which is a venerable American tradition; much less can it ban calling on people to march on the Capitol. There is no connection between the rally at one end of the mall, or the march that took place from the rally, and the riot at the other end. The first two were 100% legal, the third was not. Anyone who participated only in the first two is completely in the clear.
And of course expressing the opinion that the election was stolen is 100% protected speech and can’t be considered as participating in the riot in any way. And that’s so even if he didn’t honestly believe it and was deliberately lying. False speech is also protected.
So these people are full of it, not just on one level but on multiply redundant levels. They need first to be hauled into court, and then, when the court has given them a drubbing, the legislature should impeach them (assuming it can do that; I can’t find anything about it online).
“He spoke at the rally, which was a 100% legal and constitutionally protected event” sure it’s protected speech but the consequences aren’t, if that’s proven to be “comfort and aide’ for an insurrection then there is a case. I don’t know enough of the facts of the case to have an opinion either way but on its face there is a case. How strong a case I’ve no idea
” I don’t know enough of the facts of the case to have an opinion either way “……
And yet you do…and a very wrong one as Milhouse has clearly pointed out.
“I don’t know enough of the facts of the case to have an opinion”.
You should have started and ended with this fatty. Everything else was meaningless waffle.
Protected is protected. There can be no legal consequences for protected speech, no matter what its results are. Nor may the government do anything that would have a chilling effect on more such speech.
Incitement, of course, is not protected, whether it’s at a rally or anywhere else. But no argument can be made that anything anyone said at the rally was incitement. Not unless you’re using the Israeli definition, which the US courts have definitively rejected.
I think the words of the Constitution are an exception. Otherwise protected speech can be considered Aid and Comfort to an insurrection. It may not be actionable criminally, but could be disqualifying under 14A if one’s political opponents are the people with the sole and exclusive authority to adjudicate the case (both the NC elections board and the NC courts are controlled by Democrats).
“Otherwise protected speech can be considered Aid and Comfort to an insurrection”
No, it cannot. Those words in the 14th are clearly taken from the treason clause in the main constitution, so they have to be read the same way, and in the treason clause they don’t include protected speech.
@milhouse
Sorry but the 1st amendment isn’t unlimited in the protection it provides. Inciting an insurrection, if that’s shown to be the case would most definitely not be protected.
@case of the blues
I’ll be specific because you clearly don’t understand what I’ve stated. I wont opine on whether the man in question has incited an insurrection not whether the first amendment protects him.
@mailman
Do you ever say anything useful?
You use that word proven. That’s an important concept. First there must be an insurrection. Then you have to define when did it start. Then you have to find acts that gave aid and comfort to the insurrection before you invoke the disability to run. For instance, the cause of slavery had several founding fathers that supported it. It’s not to their credit but was their speech, their actions in furtherance of the cause aid and comfort to the later insurrection?
I don’t think you can ever reasonably make that case. You have to have an insurrection first, and not just go back and criminalize speech ex post facto. That would be like arresting all Puerto Ricans who gave a speech in favor of independence for treason once a band of them bombed the US Capitol.
It would be unjust and an unamerican travesty. That goes for all causes, whether I like the cause or not.
Even during an actual insurrection, speech in favor of it is still protected. “Aid and comfort” cannot include protected speech. That’s why the treason clause specifies an “overt act”.
Of course not all speech is protected, but “mere advocacy” is, no matter what is being advocated.
Remember, NC law requires the office seeker to prove he didn’t participate in the insurrection. Cawthorn has the burden of proof.
And he can prove his eligibility.
Well the plain meaning of an insurrection is a violent attack on the authority of government. Given the peaceful and democratically approved transfer of power was underway and the ‘protestors’ disrupted this in a violent manner that seems a fair description. The next question which I’ve already stated I’m unsure of is deciding whether the speech immediately prior to the events would qualify as comfort and aid.
Your analogy is poorly thought out, its not the independence part that’s important its the support of the act of bombing that would qualify. Of course that would depend on the precise speech and is open to debate but merely showing support for the outcome of independence would be too far removed.
I’m not really clear how your founding fathers works. Their needs to be a direct relationship between the speech and event.
@milhouse
“Even during an actual insurrection, speech in favor of it is still protected”
That’s absolutely not true since the 1st amendment has always been interpreted as not being a protection for true threats as per watts vs united states. Since by definition an insurrection is a crime of violence someone encouraging it would not be under the auspices of the 1st amendments protection.
The law doesn’t permit attainder it is an all or nothing proposition.
Lets say a constitutional amendment bans anyone who killed their mother from running for office, and a congressman’s mother passes away.
The board of elections can’t then decide without the judicial system convicting the man that he killed his mother and is therefore ineligible you need a conviction in court.
The law is that everyone is 100% innocent of all crimes they have not been convicted of which is why the standard for any criminal conviction is proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
There is no case for the NC State board, and it would mean the constitution isn’t much of a protection if it is allowed to claim it by the federal courts.
It needs to be 2 terms for senate, maximum. And 2 terms for house maximum. We don’t need any house member sticking around for 12 years.
I say 3 terms for house maximum. This is still half the max you have set for the Senate (and equivalent to 1 Senate term) and when Reps have to run for election every 2 years that seems to be a more effective timeline IMO.
Perhaps a maximum age would be less objectionable. We already have minimum ages so a simple sentence setting a maximum age inserted via amendment would suffice. Say 70 or maybe the age of that persons eligibility for full social security benefits?
I dunno. I am within sight of that finish line, and my spidey sense for political bullshit and scammery just seems to improve year after year.
The old saying about those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it… nothing teaches you history more intuitively than living through lots of it.
12 years total between the two houses.
Then go get a real job.
Article 5, Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)
“That the legislative and executive powers of the state should be separate and distinct from the judiciary; and that the members of the two first may be restrained from oppression, by feeling and participating the burdens of the people, they should, at fixed periods, be reduced to a private station, return into that body from which they were originally taken, and the vacancies be supplied by frequent, certain, and regular elections, in which all, or any part, of the former members, to be again eligible, or ineligible, as the laws shall direct.”
“Reduced to a private station.”
In other words, to taste the very laws they enacted.
It’s ridiculous and outrageous. Vice President Kamala Harris promoted a bail fund for people arrested during the Black Lives Matter/Antifa riots of 2020. Is she also disqualified?
____________________________________________________________________
she never has been and never will be “qualified”
“Fine. May the same apply to every single Democrat who showed any support for BLM and Antifa throughout the months of riots in 2020. Do Democrats really want to have this discussion?”
That would be fine if only the levers of power actually believed in fairness.
The only thing these “elected” represenatives believe in is their holding on to for ever that power. They don’t give a damn about the American people.
As much as I support term limits. I can’t see it passing in Congress. There’s little chance a majority will vote to limit their own power. The Convention of States is the answer.
Actually not, because the section excludes the presidency and vice presidency. Jefferson Davis could not be elected to Congress, but he could have been elected president. I presume the reason was that the only way he could be elected president was if the whole country wanted it; it was impossible for the South to elect him on its own. And if the whole country decided it wanted him despite his record, then why bar him?
Besides which, the 1872 amnesty applies.
How can the 1872 amnesty apply to acts that haven’t occurred yet?
Read it. By its own language it does.
Text of law: May 22,1872 CHAP. CXCIII-An Act to remove Disabilities imposed by the fourteenth article of amendment of the Constitution of the United States~. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein) That all political disabilities imposed by the third section of the fourteenth article of amendments of the Constitution of the United States are hereby removed from all persons whomsoever, except Senators and Representatives of the thirty -sixth and thirty-seventh Congresses, officers in the judicial, military, and naval service of the United States, heads of departments, and foreign ministers of the United States.
Approved May 22, 1872.
I read the law as applying to all persons who exist at the moment it was enacted, excluding the ones listed. It cannot possibly apply to someone who didn’t yet exist.
That’s not what it says. You’re adding language that isn’t there. “All persons whomsoever” means everyone who has ever existed or will ever exist, except for those specifically excluded.
The supreme court has already made it clear that term limits would require a constitutional amendment. Cawthorn’s bill is not for one. Therefore it’s frivolous.
Inapplicable, yes. Frivolous, no. If you could get a law passed with specific term limits (which won’t happen, but we’re hypothetical here), something well-defined, short, and popular, the *next* step is to take that exact law to the States to have it approved (which they won’t, but we’re still hypothetical here) and passed as an Amendment. One problem with ‘term limits’ amendments is the sheer flexibility of the term. Get it down solid, and go from there. (Yes, I know it’s a long shot, but that’s the path, strewn with land mines as it is. The Supreme Court will undoubtedly strike it down, which is just one step in the process.)
No. The states can’t vote on an amendment until Congress proposes it to them. Cawthorn’s bill is not a bill to amend the constitution. Therefore even if it were to pass both houses with a 2/3 majority it still couldn’t be taken to the states.
In a country where the rule of law is politics dependent, what else do you expect. What to watch for is if the GOPe tries to make nice and accept this ruling.
Subotai Bahadur
For this to stick, wouldn’t they need to first charge and then convict him? After all, we are innocent until proven guilty.
No, this is not a criminal penalty, it’s a constitutional disqualification. Participation in an insurrection (if not for the 1872 amnesty) is like being 24 years old, or not living in the state, or not being a US citizen none of those are crimes, but they do disqualify one from the House, and it’s the board of elections’s job to enforce that and keep 24-year-olds, aliens, and residents of other states off the ballot. So they say they’re doing the same thing here. The thing is, they’re wrong. Just as they can’t disqualify someone who is genuinely 25 years old by claiming he’s 24, they can’t disqualify someone who didn’t participate in an insurrection, or who has had his disqualification lifted, simply by claiming that he did and that it wasn’t.
Bullshit, you haven’t participated in an insurrection until you’ve been ajudicated to have done so. The government has no right to take life, liberty or property without due process.
Democrats are calling to disagree with you Ironclaw.
Democrats are retarded.
You are wrong, for two reasons.
1. You’ve participated the moment you did so, even if you’re never caught, let alone convicted. Even if the president pardons you, you still did it, and you’re still disqualified by 14.3. Only congress can lift the ban (which it did), and even that doesn’t mean you didn’t do it, it just means you’re eligible anyway.
2. Disqualifying someone from a ballot deprives him of neither life, nor liberty, nor property. It is not a criminal penalty. Therefore the fifth amendment does not apply.
If the board of elections decided you were 24 years old, what sort of due process do you think it would have to give you? But at the same time, think of what would happen if you wanted to run for congress and you were disqualified for being underage. You’d obviously sue the board and ask for a writ of mandamus, on the grounds that its decision was incorrect. That is exactly what Cawthorn can and undoubtedly will do. It’s not a matter of due process but of the actual facts.
14.3 can only apply to *proven* not *claimed* participation, or anybody can claim anyone is disqualified. Every single election could then reliably be filtered from people who the Powers That Be decide are not worthy of being elevated to that office.
No, people said he particpated. He did not, he simply gave a speech at the other end of the mall and that’s the point. You cannot take the man’s right to run for office based on nothing but accusations. If you want them to stick, prove them or shut the hell up.
Barring someone from running for an office they are qualified to run for DOES steal one of their personal rights.
Marc Elias is going after Cawthorn first because NC law requires Cawthorn to prove that he didn’t participate in he insurrection – and proving a negative is impossible.
It is not life, liberty, nor property. Those are the only things you can’t be deprived of without due process. I don’t care if you don’t like it, that’s how it is.
And it’s the board of elections’s job to decide who’s ineligible to be on the ballot. The remedy to them willfully making a wrong determination is to sue them and prove that you are eligible. Which Cawthorn can easily do.
No. NC law on disqualification puts the burden of proof on the office seeker to prove that he isn’t disqualified. No conviction is required. Cawthorn has to prove that he didn’t participate in the insurrection – which is impossible.
He can easily prove what you ask. He was in congressional session at the time, not outside with the people who also weren’t committing insurrection.
Any law that is impossible to satisfy is easily adjudged unconstitutional. Next.
I agree with Ironclaw and not with henrybowman. Cawthorn can easily prove he did not participate in the not-an-insurrection. And if it were impossible to prove eligibility that would not make the 14A unconstitutional.
I think term limits is, as a law, a very bad idea. What if someone really great got into office and did wonderful things? We already have term limits, unless you do not believe elections really work. If you do not believe that elections are the will of the people, then you are really asking for a limit to the amount of power that can be stolen.
With gerrymandering on both sides to protect incumbents and keep them in uncompetitive districts the reelection rate of incumbent members of Congress is in excess of 98% in general elections since WWII. The average turnover in the HoR is 9% but that’s nearly exclusively due to retirement.
So in that sense elections do not work. Incumbency has advantages in fundraising and name recognition that when added to gerrymandering to protect incumbents who go along to get along of both parties are hard for a challenger to overcome. Polls consistently show public disdain for Congress but our elections don’t reflect that; why? The power of incumbency and inter party back scratching to protect incumbents during redistricting.
Perhaps I missed it, but is this a circumstance where the NC AG should weigh in?
Depends on NC law. It may be in the AG’s jurisdiction. Or perhaps the Secretary of State. Or the board may be independent of them, and the only recourse would be to sue them.
In any case, both the AG and the SoS are Democrats, so even if they could intervene they wouldn’t. Thus Cawthorn will have to go to court.
The NC AG is a pure leftist. Don’t expect much from him.
The most salient point made so far.
A congressman speaking in support of a protest in DC, is not, by the loosest criteria, “participating” in an insurrection.
The left kept doing this with President Trump. The 1st impeachment over the phone call was only the President of the United States exercising his plenary powers. The President asked another nation if evidence existed of Biden corruption. The United States has the power to investigate US citizens breaking the law on foreign soil.
IF, If, if, questioning the results of a states electors can be disqualifying, then lots of Dem congress critters have lodged that accusation.
The cure for this is Texas board of elections to file the exact same charges against Sheila Jackson Lee. The only thing the power mad Democrats understand is using their rules against them.
I ask this as an honest question — what has Sheila Jackson Lee done that is purportedly insurrectionary? If you had said Maxine Waters, or Ilhan Omar, I could imagine which incident was under discussion, but the only dirt that comes to my mind on Jackson Lee is her “flag planted on Mars by Neil Armstrong” statement which, while galactically brain-damaged, was not particularly insurrection-y.
He said what she did that, according to this standard, would be insurrectionary: she challenged the validity of a state’s electors. If that makes Cawthorn ineligible (which it doesn’t), then it must also make Lee ineligible.
Madison Cawthorn, 26, is introducing term limit legislation on Capitol Hill that would restrict people to serving 24 years total in Congress.
The youngest member of Congress wants House members to only be able to serve six two-year terms and members of the Senate to be restricted to two six-year terms, according to a copy of the legislation revealed Wednesday.
its 12 years not 24
It’s 24 total. 12 years each in the house and senate.
But this cannot be done by legislation. It requires a constitutional amendment.
Which means it will never happen.
Convincing even half of each party to limit themselves is a near impossible task.
For those of you still fascinated by your chances of winning this sidewalk shell game, I should mention that it is common practice for your local political scammer to file bills that he knows full well have zero chance of progressing beyond committee, just so he can highlight them in his newsletter to you, to show you how hard he is working for your side, while all the time knowing that the status quo is safe from change..
In some statehouses, the scam is even further institutionalized. In Massachusetts, when the phrase “filed by request” appears at the top of a bill, it’s like a secret society handshake. It means, “Some constituent exercised his absolute state constitutional right to file this bill directly, though me as his representative, but I don’t support it — please kill it for me.”
I have also seen the phrase “by request” appearing on federal bills, and have to wonder if it is a similar dogwhistle.
And just to be clear, by “local political scammer” I didn’t mean state or county legislators, I meant any politician (state or federal) who has you as part of his district constituency.
fwiw we already have term limits.
the ballot box.
if voters WANT someone to be there for all their lives thats on them.
don’t agree with the 22 amendment.
voters want to fk themselves for decades thats on them.
So should we have done the same for POTUS?
Washington had it right; he just didn’t make sure it went far enough.
Life expectancy was also lower in his day, so senile but connected politicos weren’t as likely to worm their way into legislative office over and over again.
The problem is that this viewpoint would make perfect sense if the damage a legislator could cause were geographically limited by his own district. But I’m tired of being held hostage by the acts of a lunatic in DC who was sent there by an organized asylum 10 states distant from me.
I read this as merely, “we have the authority to…” not necessarily “we will…”
Marc Elias’ henchmen will still need to make their case.
Well, of course they have the authority, in the same sense that the DMV has the authority to determine that you’re too young to get a driver’s license. But if they’re wrong a court can set them right.
But do Federal courts have the legitimate authority to do so without an act of Congress first? The NC courts are controlled by Democrats.
If you are a Republican or Conservative running for office, you should expect to see Amendment 14 Article 3 applied to you.
It’s not just the vote counters that count.
This is a test run for the true target. Donald J. Trump.
If they can bar Cawthorn there is zero reason that they can’t bar Trump. I think behind closed doors the Democrats believe that Trump will sweep 2024. They will than have to deal with a guy who doesn’t have to worry about another election, is looking for revenge, whose known to be a person who believes in revenge, and doesn’t give a crap about the GOP.
My fear with Cawthorn is that if the Dems are successful and they start doing it to a lot of Republicans and to Trump that this may be the spark that gets the ball rolling on taking us from a cold to a hot civil war.
The GOP can not let this happen. The GOP will cease to exist if they stand by and let the Dems do this. Dems have shown they have no self control. They will do this everyone they can if they succeed with Cawthron. House and Senate members will be targeted. The whole GOP at the local, state, and federal levels has to get in on this and fight.
You know, we’ve gotten to where we take their visceral hatred for Trump for granted, but I can’t really understand why it exists. Everyone has theories, and they all sound plausible, but none by themselves seem to explain just how limbic it seems to be.
Well, it started when he decided to run for President as a Republican. Then it escalated when he had the effrontery to beat Hillary.
My tinfoil hat tilts towards the “Big Club” theory.
Republicans are token, controlled opposition to the Party of Big Government, because if they were actual opposition, the grift would stop flowing. Before Trump, when was the last time the Republican Party endorsed a presidential candidate that came anywhere close to your political philosophy? Reagan (42 years ago, half a lifetime), and even he talked the talk a lot better than he walked. Before him, maybe Ike in 1952 (a full lifetime) and maybe not.
Who do they nominate instead? Romney, McCain, Dole, Ford? Even the Bushes were RINOs. Do you feel represented?
(I will give them Goldwater. Too bad he was outmaneuvered by that racist, patricidal filthbag LBJ.)
Why do they hate Trump? Because Trump end-ran the same party gatekeepers who had previously sweat buckets railroading state conventions to ensure that their choice (McCain) received every possible state delegate that would otherwise have gone to true conservative Ron Paul. He understood that people in his party were “the enemy” and acted accordingly. And when he won, it put the brakes on the Woke Train’s progress for a full eight years.
Trump is not part of the Big Club. And that’s the bottom line of why they hate him.
I say this with the utmost respect for my conservative values.
DO NOT run Trump again. Some of you are just delusional…he’s as much or more damaged than Hillary in a political sense.
Exactly how did you come to this conclusion?
The small rally’s?
Lack of contributions?
Desired endorsement of other candidates?
Trump has three major liabilities. First is his age. Second is the fact that everybody in Washington on both sides of the aisle have every one of their lawfare knives sharpened for him, in revenge for upsetting their applecart.
These are serious liabilities. The second, particularly because Trump is not a swamp wheeler-dealer with 25+ years of experience in deflecting backstabbers. In fact, he has a disturbingly unfortunate tendency to hire them.
Trump’s ideal role in the next election would be as a kingmaker. If he got behind a white knight (the obvious choice right now is Ron DeSantis), spoke at his rallies, endorsed him, bequeathed him his political groupies, the ticket would be unstoppable.
Which brings us to his third liability: his ego. If he can overcome it long enough to pass on his torch, we can win. If not, even if Trump wins, look forward to another term or two of a new “Russia, Russia, Russia” campaign from the left to glue him to the floor.
“Trump is not a swamp wheeler-dealer with 25+ years of experience in deflecting backstabbers.” comedy gold –
Lobbying increased under Trump
Trump employed totally unqualified people because of loyalty not competence or indeed just because they were related
Profited from office – for example charging the secret service vast sums to stay in his hotels
Failure to be transparent – never released tax records
Profiting from pandemic – a number of companies with relationships to Trump such as donors or lobbyist linked companies had huge government relief/support
Corruption – Scott Pruitt, Ryan Zinke, Tom Price resigned over scandals’, Wilbur Ross, Elaine Chao, David Benhardt should have
the list goes on and on
https://prospect.org/power/mapping-corruption-donald-trump-executive-branch/
I’m not sure the GOP can do anything at all. Elias is the best Dem election lawyer for a reason. He knows what he is doing. The Federal Courts may not have the jurisdiction to interfere because the time place and manner of Congressional elections is controlled by the States. In the absence of an act of Congress specifying how 14A disqualifications are to be adjudicated, what basis is there for a Federal Court to overrule the State Board of Elections? And there is nothing to stop the NC Board of Elections to disqualify the entire Republican Party in toto, because they can take an out of context remark from the RNC Chairman to rule in that manner. The NC Supreme Court is controlled by Democrats and will not overrule them. The Federal Courts cannot interfere without Federal legislation.
I don’t think that can be right. How did the case overturning state laws imposing term limits on congressmen get to the supreme court? Evidently they found some hook to give the federal courts jurisdiction.
Actually there is. The 14.3 disqualification does not extend to the presidency or vice presidency. And the reason is very simple. After the Civil War it was easy for former rebels to be elected from the South, where the public still supported the former rebellion, so congress and the ratifying states thought it necessary to prevent that. But a former rebel could not be elected president without national support, and if he had that there was no reason to prevent him from being elected.
The NC board is composed of appointed Democrats. 2 (executive, judicial) out of 3 branches of govt in NC are controlled by Democrats. The threat to Cawthorn is very real. NC law is the easiest for disqualification, which is why they are doing their test case here first.
24 years in congress is still way too long.