Election officials, most of them Republicans, sharply criticized the audit of 2020 ballots in Arizona’s Maricopa County. Trump apparently hopes that the findings, gathered by a private, pro-Trump firm called Cyber Ninjas, will enable him to call for similar recounts in other contested states. He continues to insist that Biden “stole” the election, despite his campaign’s failure to produce evidence in more than 60 state and federal courts.
The ballots in all the contested states have previously been suited two or three times.
The Washington Post reports:
The Republican-dominated Maricopa County Board of Supervisors on Monday denounced an ongoing audit of the 2020 election vote as a “sham” and a “con,” calling on the GOP-led state Senate to end the controversial recount that has been championed by former president Donald Trump.
In a fiery public meeting and subsequent letter to state Senate President Karen Fann, the board members said the audit has been inept, promoted falsehoods and defamed the public servants who ran the fall election.
Calling the process a “spectacle that is harming all of us,” the five members of the board — including four Republicans — asked the state Senate to recognize that it is essential to call off the audit, which officials have said is only about one-quarter complete.
“It is time to make a choice to defend the Constitution and the Republic,” they wrote. “We stand united together to defend the Constitution and the Republic in our opposition to the Big Lie. We ask everyone to join us in standing for the truth,” they added, using a term that refers to the false claim that the election was stolen.
[Read the Maricopa County officials’ letter]
In a calculated show of unity, they were joined by Maricopa’s other elected officials: the sheriff, a Democrat; and the Republican county recorder, who leads the elections office.
“Our state has become a laughingstock,” the county officials wrote. “Worse, this ‘audit’ is encouraging our citizens to distrust elections, which weakens our democratic republic.”
The pushback by Maricopa County officials amounts to their most vehement protest yet of the recount, which began in late April and is being conducted in Phoenix by a private Florida-based company, Cyber Ninjas, whose chief executive has previously echoed Trump’s false allegations that fraud tainted the 2020 election.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Investigations of Trump’s ally, Rudy Giuliani, are bringing attention to Louis Freeh. The Washington Monthly (9-17-2018) wrote, “This shady consultant is paying Giuliani while he’s also Trump’s lawyer.” Freeh is described as “fulsomely praising Russian law enforcement.” What forces in D.C. are friendly to Russia at the expense of the U.S.?When the religious right, of which Freeh is a devout member, elected
Trump, it made delving in and questioning, prudent and obligatory.
You know you are making me nauseous . Not you of course but the religious right . The ties to authoritarian demagogic Eastern European regimes should frighten anyone who believes in the image we like to project about the Nation. Whether we lived up to that image or not.
Joel Some thoughts: You and I and many in our age group apparently hold a historical remembrance of what democracy means in the face of the Cold War, of Russian aggression, and overlapped wit that, WWII German fascism. Apparently, many who were born post 70’s don’t have that memory, or at least it’s not baked into their bones as it is in ours.
Couple that with the rise of the politically active oligarchs who hate democracy, who don’t want to pay their taxes or be regulated in ANY way by the government, but rather to purchase their own group of in-their-pocket politicians, and then use their wealth and power and fight like hell to get them elected in a politically naive context of Americans.
Couple that with the religious right in this country (at least) who hate secularity and who don’t understand why maintaining its distinction between church and state is a deal-breaker for democracy (and here comes abortion again).
Now, with a recalcitrant brand of ignorance and mistrust of democratic institutions spread around the land in every nook and cranny . . . and, yes, we are facing a dangerous congealed power camp that would and could sink democracy itself.
For Linda, however, the Catholic Church is up next. She apparently doesn’t know the difference between the Catholic Church as a whole, and its virulent right-wing elements. I herald complaints about the Church’s powerful right wing elements who are pushing back with all they have against the winds of change that ARE ONGOING in the pews and the internal aspects of the institution that is the “Catholic Church.”
But please don’t join Linda in her interest in smearing the entire Catholic Church (which is up next if I guess right) and all who belong to it. In my view after having read her many notes is that she is as extremely virulent an atheist and anti-Catholic as any Proud Boy who is virulently extreme and hateful about “liberals,” about anyone who doesn’t support Trump, about democratic institutions and about anyone who is not “white,” whatever that means. (In my imagination, she wears a horned headdress like that Jan. 6 guy.)
Linda’s MO is to find something really wrong ANYWHERE and then work backwards searching under every rock in that person’s or something’s background to find some hint of Catholic influence; then she airs her cherry picking in an OMG! attitude, AS IF there were no other Catholics or Catholic institutional in-groups in the world who are not aligned with the right-wing . . . like Biden or the Pope as just two examples? or that the history of the Church has many long-time elements who ALSO have been aligned with humanitarian values and the poor and everything genuinely Christian.
In my view, the situation here in the US tells me that the struggle that the greater WE AND the Church are undergoing is nothing less than a struggle between the tenets of civilization and the tenets of left-over tribalism while, at the same time and not without irony, the family, which is what is best about the tribe, is also in demise.
The overall question is whether the greater WE are actually ready to live in a civilized democracy and to mediate that with belonging to a civilized church? We don’t know the answer to that, but it certainly doesn’t look too good for way too many people. CBK
Joel-
I appreciate that you recognize the clear and present danger America faces as a result of the alliance of power brokers from Catholic and evangelical networks (many apparently enabled by Koch and Murdoch). Similar to Chiara’s assumed reasoning for repeating her message while adding supporting evidence, I try to reach new readers through mostly themed comments. When I first began to see a pattern of state Catholic Conferences promoting school choice, I knew it was an unreported story. I felt shock because I grew up when the Church did not politic. In hindsight, the seismic shift in abortion rhetoric should have provided a clue. Had we known the role religion played in the political goals of Leonard Leo and Paul Weyrich, our fight against the influence would be more advanced.
Media’s focus exclusively on evangelical (and Catholic) scandals of the moment distracts from a Catholic political structure highly organized and successful, particularly in the central states and D.C. Catholic conferences in Kansas and Indiana take credit for school choice legislation. I have full confidence that Catholic influence in other states like Ohio has also brought about and expanded school choice. Some school choice billionaires may be independent of religion but, the people they hire for their influencing non-profits may be motivated by religion. When Rex Sinquefield funds an education policy program at the Catholic St. Louis University, it would appear not to be independent. Researchers could try to draw a line between Catholic and independent influences in New Orleans, Louisiana, where the last remaining public school recently closed. (Commenter Greg has provided insight on the subject at this blog.)
I hope you’ll read the info. in my comment added to Diane’s recent post about Minnesota. As corroboration of Catholic political influence, Bishop Hebda of Minnesota, on the advice of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, prohibited his priests from voting in the 2020 Democratic primary. Only a religious leader who felt emboldened would deny an employee the right to vote in the U.S. democracy.
I ignore insults from my troll. They aren’t valid. Facts are facts and I trust blog readers to accept or discount information from reliable sources. My comments provide enough info for internet searches to confirm or reject.
My goal is to reach just one person per day. Joel, thanks for letting me know you are my person for today.
Linda . . . True to form. thank you for making my case for me. CBK
Catherine King
Priest is generic attached to no religion.
“in every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. he is always in alliance with the Despot abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. it is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them: and to effect this they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man ”
And then .
“[Y]our sect by it’s sufferings has furnished a remarkable proof of the universal spirit of religious intolerance, inherent in every sect, disclaimed by all while feeble, and practised by all when in power. our laws have applied the only antidote to this vice, protecting our religious, as they do our civil rights by putting all on an equal footing”
Sadly no matter what good aspirations we may ascribe to Religion . Jefferson was right . Look no further than the recent conflict in Israel and Palestine. The only way to preserve freedom of Religion is to insure freedom from Religion. To keep the wall between State and Church too high to scale. It is not the Evangelicals, nor the Catholics who dominate the Federalist Society , they are joined by the Jews and would be joined by the Muslims and Hindus as the tragedy of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan demonstrate.
So believe what you want as long as your beliefs can’t infringe on others .
Joel I appreciate the filling out of the Jefferson quote. Somehow, I doubt Linda meant anything but that, and think that she was interpreting as I did: “religious priest.”
Also, what you say about separation of church and state is: secularity (needed distinctions/separations–NOT governed by religious doctrines/orders) and not secularism (for which Donald Trump is the poster boy . . . the total loss of ANY moral-ethical authority in one’s life, leaving a collapse of anything known as human development or responsibility to others.
In that vein, it’s easy to realize that the problems in the Middle East are not MERELY religious conflict as such, but the LACK of secular thought and institutional expression: that would civilize religions orders (all of them) to even have a chance at working out their problems. And of course, there’s more to it than that, considering the old standby: corruption, especially corruption covered over with religious symbol.
The fundamental question is not whether we are religious or have religious groups in any particular culture, however; but rather whether those persons and groups can live peaceably with others from other religions.
The minimum condition is some form of democracy and its secular freedoms, and something like the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights (rule of law), coupled with a sense of genuineness and respect for others fostered in the social order . . . . sigh . . . CBK
Joel-
I responded to your e-mail at 8:48 a.m..Friday. My reply is in moderation.