From Inquirer
True story: I used to be a crazy Civil War buff when I was 5 years old. In the year when most normal kids were getting Beatles records or the latest loud offering from Mattel, I asked Santa for my blue Union soldier uniform. I even made my dad get off the Pennsylvania Turnpike and take me to see Gettysburg on our annual pilgrimage to my Midwestern grandparents. Little did I know back in 1964 that I'd get a chance in my lifetime to write about America's second War Between the States.
I don't know what else to call it when 18 U.S. states -- that's seven more than the 11 that seceded in 1861 and formed the Confederacy -- go all the way to the Supreme Court to have my votes and about 7 million others here in Pennsylvania, and those of three other states, thrown out for absurd reasons. It can only be read as, we don't like who won.
Something has clearly gone off the rails when at least 18 people with enough smarts to get elected attorney general of an American state sign onto a lawsuit that managed to be frivolous yet also argued to end democracy as we've known it these last 233 years or so. Or when nearly two-thirds of the Republican members of the U.S. House trip over each other to sign on. Or when dozens of state lawmakers in Harrisburg or other capitals fall into line -- trying to invalidate the results in their own state.
"This party has to stand up for democracy first, for our Constitution first and not political considerations," a Michigan congressman, Rep. Paul Mitchell, who voted for Trump last month, said on Monday. "It's not about a candidate. It's not simply for raw political power and that's what I feel is going on, and I've had enough." Mitchell's words came in a letter announcing that he's leaving the Republican Party to serve as an independent, but what's stunning is not that he did this but how few other GOPers feel the same.
