Texas - WTF is this even - a very short reassurance thread:

1: The Texas "lawusit" against four other "battleground" states in the United States Supreme Court is legally stupid.* It is so legally stupid that I was reluctant to believe that even Ken Paxton would file it.

*My patience level is not ginormous today. Please don't try to explain to me why you think it isn't stupid for whatever other reasons because I'll be making liberal use of the airlock. Thx.
2: Yes, one state can sue another at the US Supreme Court. However, the Supreme Court gets to decide whether to take the case. One factor that they will **undoubtedly** look at is the factor of "injury."
Texas is claiming two things. First, that the states have a special interest in who becomes Vice President because of the tiebreaker. Second, that their electors are injured if their votes are "diluted" by electors from states that, in Texas's view, didn't obey their own law.
There is very little argument presented for "injury." Even less - barely a paragraph - was presented for how the defendant states caused that injury.

For lawyers, this is a signal that this is a performance of politics by "litigation" and not a serious effort.
Nonlawyers - who are the audience for this drek - may be impressed by the arguments about how other states violated their own laws.

Lawyers - at least competent ones - will zero in on the alleged injury and the evidence that the injury was caused by the defendant states.
Why? Simple.

Courts care about how the person bringing the complaint was allegedly harmed by the person being sued. If there's not a harm you can sue over and/or you can't show how the person you are suing caused that harm, You Have No Case.
This applies to states, too.

The motion for leave to file doesn't seem to allege an actual injury that courts address, and doesn't really allege how the state in question caused that injury.
Simply put, @JohnFetterman has a better ability to bring a court case against @DanPatrick to recover 2 million dollars in Sheetz gift cards for showing proof of election fraud than the state of Texas has to bring a case against Pennsylvania over the election.
This lawsuit is Texas taking a dump on the rest of the Republic and I'm angry as all hell that those- those people have chosen to do this.

I am not worried in the least about the case.
PS - Akiva looks to be at least as pissed off as I am, and he's being pissed off in more detail.

https://t.co/QRIBlW6qf6
And it's being picked apart here in even more exquisite detail.

I'll let them take it. I looked at the injury section and then deleted the download.

https://t.co/ipbla8ose4
Seriously:
The Republican Party, as a whole, is a clear and present danger to the viability of the Republic.

More from Mike Dunford

I went over the dismissal on my stream, but a few thoughts on where things are at:

1: The Notice of Appeal doesn't shock me; I figured Louie would be this dumb.
2: As was the case with the case at the District Court, it doesn't really matter how vigorously Pence defends this.


3: The lack of standing is so spectacularly, glaringly obvious that it doesn't really matter whether Pence raised certain arguments; they will get noticed by the court.
4: That's because federal courts have an independent duty to ensure they have jurisdiction.

5: Standing is a jurisdictional requirement; no standing means no case.
6: The rules for standing are clear and nothing in the opinion dismissing the case was the least bit controversial in any universe except the alternate one inhabited by Louie and the Arizonan cosplayers.

7: "But it's the 5th Circuit" will be raised both by Trumpistians and those who are exceptionally nervous. There is exactly as much reason to be concerned about the 5th as there was the trial court: ie none at all.

So - my expectations:
Given the timeline, I suspect that Louie will be granted an expedited appeal and will lose on an expedited basis. I also expect that he will appeal to SCOTUS and the appeal there will not be expedited.
THREAD:
Good afternoon, followers of frivolous election litigation. There's a last-minute entry in the competition for dumbest pre-inauguration lawsuit - a totally loony effort to apparently leave the entire USA without a government.

We'll start with the complaint in a minute.

But first, I want to give you a quick explanation for why I'm going to keep talking about these cases even after the inauguration.

They're part of an ongoing effort - one that's not well-coordinated but is widespread - to discredit our fundamental system of government.

It's a direct descendent, in more ways than one, of birtherism. And here's the thing about birtherism. It might have been a joke to a lot of people, but it was extremely pernicious. It obviously validated the racist "not good enough to be President" crowd. But that wasn't all.

Don't get me wrong, that was bad enough. Validating racism helped put the kind of shitbird who would tweet this from an official government account into power. But it didn't stop


(Also, if you agree with Pompeo about multiculturalism - the legendary melting pot - not being what this country is all about, you need to stop following me now. And maybe go somewhere and think about your life choices and what made you such a tool.)

More from Court

1) God bless the State of Texas and @KenPaxtonTX What he has just done gives us every chance to save our Republic and our country.

Keep in mind that there are only a few instances where a party can file a direct lawsuit with the U.S. Supreme Court, a state claiming harm by

2) another state is one of those instances.

https://t.co/xvXGDdgDYh

Texas Attorney General @KenPaxtonTX has filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court seeking and emergency injunction against Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia “from taking action to


3) certify presidential electors or to have such electors take any official action including without limitation participating in the electoral college.”

@KenPaxtonTX argues that arbitrary changes made by the state’s governors, secretaries of states and election supervisors were

4) “inconsistent with relevant state laws and were made by non-legislative entities, without any consent by the state legislatures. The acts of these officials thus directly violated the Constitution.”

The lawsuit states: “these non-legislative changes … facilitated the casting

5) and counting of ballots in violation of state law, which, in turn, violated the Electors Clause of Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution.” […] “By these unlawful acts, the Defendant States have not only tainted the integrity of their own citizens vote, but

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