It’s hard to tell which is more disturbing. On the one hand, you have 6 Republican Senators and 121 House Representatives who insisted on claiming, without evidence, that the 2020 election was fraudulent, even after the Capitol building was stormed by a like-minded mob. On the other hand, you have Republican politicians calling, en masse, for “unity” after the insurrection attempt by their followers failed.

Even if it is less disturbing, the calls for unity are far more dangerous.

As you read this, members of far-right paramilitary groups like the Proud Boys are actively planning attacks on the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C., as well as on all 50 statehouses across the country in the days before the upcoming inauguration. As alarmist and absurd as it might sound, this is not hypothetical or a conjecture: This comes straight from an internal bulletin at the FBI. …

That’s right, the Nickel Sock Fairy — the Tooth Fairy’s cousin. While she takes baby teeth and leaves petty cash, I remind adults of their physical limitations.

Like her, I show up in the middle of the night.

Unlike her, I’m there because you just did an ill-advised workout. While she’s in a tutu and has a magic wand, I’m in military boots and I’ve got a tube sock filled to the elastic with nickels. She flicks her wand and turns molars into quarters. I wind up into a full-armed swing and just bludgeon people.

I’m looking at you, Mr. Accountant who agreed to play a game of broomball with your office mates. And you, Mrs. Just-Had-a-Baby who decided to run the stroller five miles, rather than just one. Sure, that’s what you could do, before. No, it’s not what you can do, now. And yes, I’m looking at you, Mr. Tough-Mudders-Don’t-Look-That-Hard-So-I-Won’t-Train. …

The wrapping paper covers the floor and the kids and the dog are sleeping on it, unconsciously clutching their new toys as if they could be taken from them at any moment. The wife’s in the kitchen and I’m in the recliner with my eggnog, just beaming ear to ear at the ceiling in relief.

Finally, just finally, we could celebrate Christmas! It’s 2020, and for the first time in living memory — for the first time, ever — the radical commie leftist Democrats weren’t able to stop us from celebrating this sacred holiday.

Thank you, First Amendment and thank YOU, Donald J. Trump, for ending the persecution that we have faced for decades at the hands of Obama, George Soros, antifa, and the godless Democratic Party of the United States. …

Joe Biden may have won the election, but it came with an uncomfortable truth: 47% of Americans — over 74 million of them — still preferred Donald Trump. This, in spite of the laundry list of reasons to suspect that he is either demented, criminally active, immoral, corrupt, compromised by Russia, fascist, wearing a wig, or some combination thereof.

Liberals have tried reasoning with Trump supporters, but they have proven immune to facts. We have tried laughing at them, but they have proven to be shameless.

As they rage against election results that threaten to shatter their fantasy world, Trump supporters are threatening to secede from the United States if they don’t get their way. …

As soon as Twitter started flagging Donald Trump’s tweets as “misleading” or “disputed,” his ardent followers flocked to a new safe space: Parler. Like Twitter, but with even fewer rules about hate speech or disinformation (and with a terrible interface), Parler quickly became the echo-chambers of echo-chambers — a place where right-wing conspiracy theories could spread like COVID in the White House.

So when the Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear a baseless lawsuit filed by Texas against the four swing states that gave the 2020 election to Joe Biden, everyone on the platform became a constitutional law scholar. …

In law school, I had a professor that seemed to go out of his way to check off the stereotypes that came with his position. He was opinionated. He was controversial. He was hated by a significant portion of the student body. He was demeaning. He was in the throes of a divorce case with another law professor that would last over 17 years.

And he was outrageously quotable.

Those quotes were exactly what made him controversial in the classroom. They were demeaning and offensive. Many of them bordered on harassment. They made people cry. …

As a professional legal blogger, I’ve written a lot of blog posts.

A lot. Of blog posts.

Over the course of that time, I have stumbled into most of the pitfalls that litter the path of a 500-word piece.

By far the most common problem is a lack of focus: I’m writing about Subject A, but Issue B keeps sneaking in.

The solution is simple — write two blog posts or, if that’s not feasible, figure out whether Issue B is relevant and, if it really is, quickly cover it so you can move on to the main topic.

But the solution is only obvious when you can see the problem. …

Since losing the 2020 election, Donald Trump has claimed, again and again, that he only lost because of “wide spread [sic] voter fraud.”

There were dozens of reasons to raise an eyebrow at these claims:

• Trump is only saying that there was fraud in the states that he lost — in fact, he’s insisting that there should be no recounts in the states he won
• He keeps trying to throw out mail-in ballots that were counted after Election Day in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, where Republican lawmakers prohibited those same ballots from being counted beforehand
• He demands that mail-in ballots continue to be counted in states where he’s behind, but demands that they stop being counted in states where he held a…