CNN attacks Clarence Thomas for heresy
Thomas is guilty of claiming that it might be worth looking into whether some states illegally changed laws regarding voting in the 2020 election
Justice Clarence Thomas issued a dissent in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to not hear the cases of Republican Party of Pennsylvania v. Degraffenreid and Jake Corman, et al. v. Pennsylvania Democratic Party, et al. because he felt it was possible that particular officials had overstepped the bounds of their authority under the terms of the U.S. Constitution, and that these cases represented an opportunity for the Court to establish what authority they might actually possess before it becomes a potential issue in a future election. From his dissent:
The Constitution gives to each state legislature authority to determine the “Manner” of federal elections. Art. I, §4, cl. 1; Art. II, §1, cl. 2. Yet both before and after the 2020 election, nonlegislative officials in various States took it upon themselves to set the rules instead. As a result, we received an unusually high number of petitions and emergency applications contesting those changes. The petitions here present a clear example. The Pennsylvania Legislature established an unambiguous deadline for receiving mail-in ballots: 8 p.m. on election day. Dissatisfied, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended that deadline by three days. The court also ordered officials to count ballots received by the new deadline even if there was no evidence—such as a postmark—that the ballots were mailed by election day. That decision to rewrite the rules seems to have affected too few ballots to change the outcome of any federal election. But that may not be the case in the future. These cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address just what authority nonlegislative officials have to set election rules, and to do so well before the next election cycle. The refusal to do so is inexplicable.
Compare this statement to CNN’s headline from a column by Joan Biskupic regarding Thomas’s dissent.
Biskupic spends the entire column putting words in Thomas’s mouth or arguing in circles without addressing anything he actually says in his dissent.
Each state determines its own election procedures, for balloting in person or by mail, within the safeguards of the federal Voting Rights Act and Constitution.
Actually, as Thomas points out, the Constitution gives authority to state legislatures to determine election procedures, and these cases allege that “nonlegislative officials,” as Thomas refers to them, illegally changed the rules that were established by the Pennsylvania legislature.
House Minority Whip Steve Scalise on Sunday declined to concede that the 2020 election was not stolen.
"Look, Joe Biden's the president, there were a few states that did not follow their state laws, that's really the dispute that you've seen continue on," he said on ABC's "This Week." "Once the electors are counted, yes, he is the legitimate president. But if you're going to ignore the fact that there were states that did not follow their own state legislatively set laws, that's the issue at heart."
Election experts reject such contentions, and former Attorney General William Barr, a Trump appointee, said in December the Justice Department found no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
Neither Thomas nor Scalise in the quote that Biskupic provides are making any claims regarding “widespread fraud in the 2020 election,” however. They are referring to specific incidents of potentially illegal changes to state laws regarding voting in the 2020 election. Thomas was very careful in his dissent to state explicitly, “That decision to rewrite the rules seems to have affected too few ballots to change the outcome of any federal election.” In other words, he is explicitly stating that he is not making the argument that Biskupic is trying to ascribe to him so that she can more easily dismiss his claims.
Biskupic peppers her column with buzzwords like “baseless,” “debunked,” “no proof,” and “without evidence” to further imply that Thomas’s dissent is entirely without merit, but really she’s just begging the question. Thomas’s entire point is that there is at least some evidence to suggest that “nonlegislative officials” may have acted illegally. He’s not claiming that they definitely did act illegally, but merely that the Court should investigate the situation and take the opportunity to clarify what is and is not constitutional for “nonlegislative officials” to do so that this issue doesn’t repeat itself in future elections. It’s hard to understand what could possibly be objectionable about this position.
That is, it’s hard to understand unless you realize that CNN, Biskupic, and the Cathedral in general are not actually objecting to the content of Thomas’s dissent or trying to disprove his argument, but are actually objecting to the fact that he would dissent from the official narrative that they’ve declared to be True—that “the 2020 election was the most secure election in history”—and to attack him personally so that nobody will listen to his argument at all.
In this sense, Truth is not subject to facts, evidence, proof, or logic, but is True by virtue of having been declared as such by the official organs of the Cathedral. It is not scientific fact or evidence-based truth, but is rather Holy Writ, or religious dogma. The Cathedral gives the Word and the Word is Good; to question the Word is to commit heresy.
Back in reality, that there may have been instances where voting laws were illegally changed in some states and that Joe Biden was still probably legitimately elected President of the United States—in as much as we accept that any election is legitimate—are not mutually exclusive positions. We are not dealing with people living in reality, however. The Cathedral is not to be questioned, and heretics are to be burned at the stake.