Dear Congressman Reed,
I am greatly dismayed by President Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey. This reminds me of Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre. This has the APPEARANCE of Trump trying to cover up treasonous collusion with the Russians to steal the elections. Maybe Trump and his gang are totally innocent, but that is not how it appears.
23 Representatives--all Republicans--voted to keep Donald Trump's taxes secret. Of these 23 Representatives who voted to help Trump with his cover-up, 22 voted to allow YOUR ISP to sell YOUR browsing history. At the very least, those who voted to keep
Opposing Russian aggression was obviously important to Congressman Tom Reed during his campaign against John Plumb. Take a look at the following Facebook posts. (Clicking on the images will bring you to the original posts).
Donald Trump has given mixed signals as to how far he will go to kill efforts to fight climate change. Trump has a well documented history of calling climate change a hoax invented by the Chinese.
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012
Erich Reimer, a Republican Electoral Colleg Elector from Virginia wrote an article for The Hill arguing that Electors MUST vote in accordance with their states' popular votes, otherwise they invite anarchy. Read his column now before continuing on with my response.
Reimer wrote:
To suddenly so abruptly shock the citizenry by dramatically changing the institution at this juncture would also set a disastrous precedent in the future where peaceful and orderly transitions of power may be seen as more and more challengeable.
Furthermore, such chaos in the Electoral College threatens its existence in the future.
There is a key assumption behind this statement. Indeed, this key assumption forms the foundation for Reimer's entire argument. Take away this assumption and the Reimer's entire argument collapses. I will reveal that assumption in a second. But first I must pose a few questions.
Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Paper No. 68 that the purpose of the Electoral College was to prevent the elevation of those who only have "talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity" and to ensure "that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications" .
Hamilton also wrote that the Electoral College should serve as an obstacle to
cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one querter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union? (emphasis added)
In other words, the Founding Fathers established the Electoral College for the express purpose of ensuring, among other things, that the President wouldn't be a puppet of a foreign government (like say, Russia). Clearly, the Founding Fathers wanted the Electors to be free to follow their consciences and vote against those who posed a threat to our national survival. Unfortunately, thirty states have, in effect, said "screw you" to the Founding Fathers by enacting laws that attempt to force electors to vote for the candidate that won the states' election.
It is not over yet. There are now two prongs of attack currently underway to prevent the coronation of Donald Trump as President. Before discussing these efforts I'd like to remind you of one important fact: Donald Trump does NOT have a mandate. Despite winning the most electors in the Electoral College, Hillary Clinton leads Trump by 1.7 million votes as of this writing. And any mandate Trump might claim despite his loss of the popular vote has been further tainted by the fact that it was at least partially achieved by a wildly successful effort at voter suppression in the key states of Florida, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. Trump's supporters are trying to counter these points by claiming three million votes were cast for Hillary Clinton by illegal aliens. Snopes investigated this claim and could find no evidence to support it.
Other than Donald Trump, who Congressman Tom Reed has endorsed, the greatest threat to our democracy may be the corrupting influence of practically unlimited money that wealthy individuals and corporations can donate to Super Pacs. One of the biggest poster boys for demonstrating the necessity of cleaning up our political system is multi-billionaire Sheldon Adelson.
There is no doubt that the WikiLeaks release of stolen emails have damaged Hillary Clinton's campaign. She may be leading Trump in the polls despite the leaks, but she would have a much greater lead had the DNC not been hacked.
But just how much should we rely on the WikiLeaks emails in evaluating whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump should become president? There are three points to consider when evaluating the email dumps.
