As most of you are well aware by now, the Texas Attorney General has filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court of the United States regarding voting irregularities in the 2020 Presidential Election. If you are not, you can read my take here. The SCOTUS gave the four named states until Thursday to respond to the lawsuit. Pennsylvania responded and the answer is, as you would expect, dismissive and condescending.

Before we talk about the response to the Texas lawsuit, you need a little background on the Pennsylvania Attorney General, Josh Shapiro. Shapiro assumed the office of Attorney General in January, 2017. He immediately set about going after President Donald J. Trump:

At a June gathering in Colorado of intellectual and political elites, Josh Shapiro explained why he resisted entreaties to run for the U.S. Senate, waxed philosophically about interpretations of the Constitution, and took aim at President Trump.

Since Trump’s inauguration, attorneys general have “probably” become “the most important elected officials in our democracy,” Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s Democratic attorney general, said during a panel appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

And:

In his first nine months as the commonwealth’s top law enforcement officer, Shapiro has seized on the left’s anti-Trump enthusiasm, taking more than a dozen legal actions against the administration and writing scores of letters in protest.

So, this guy hates Trump and has aspirations. Not that there is anything wrong with aspirations.

Speaking of dismissive and condescending, Josh Shapiro was on with, ugh, Rachel Madcow Maddow Wednesday night:

The lawsuit is dumb, stupid and uniquely unserious? The lawsuit is based on debunked tweets, conspiracy theories and lies? Notice that Maddow and Shapiro don’t address the the last minute, unconstitutional changes that Pennsylvania made. Please read about those here.

With that background, let’s get on to his response to the Texas lawsuit. If you care to read the Pennsylvania response, you can read it here. Politico reported the lawsuit:

Officials from four presidential swing states forcefully criticized an effort by Texas and President Donald Trump to enlist the Supreme Court to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election, with Pennsylvania calling the last-ditch legal effort “seditious” and built on an “absurd” foundation.

“The Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated,” Pennsylvania said in a 43-page brief signed by Attorney General Josh Shapiro and his deputies.

I looked up the word “seditious” to be sure that I knew its meaning:

incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority.

So, it’s super, keen, cool and groovy for executives and courts to change voting rules unconstitutionally, but it’s not super, keen, cool and groovy to question those changes. How horrible is it that Republicans should ask that votes be legal and that the chain of custody be properly managed?

Is it seditious to ask that only legal ballots be counted? What makes it odd is that so many people are against making sure that only legal ballots are counted. Is it wrong to be concerned that so many changes were made to the voting rolls in the last minute under the excuse of Covid-19.

Those who preach to us about unity should have no reason to yell sedition when we ask that only legal votes be counted and that the rules should not be changed at the last minute in an unconstitutional fashion.

Who has any idea what the Supreme Court will say? But, to use every legal way to make sure that the 2020 Presidential Election was fair and legal is not un-American. It is truly American, and not seditious.

Featured Image: 2019 Inauguration of Governor Tom Wolf and Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman (39790279983).jpg/Wikimedia Commons.org/cropped/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)