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We have heavy hearts today with the news of Brian Sicknick, an officer with the U.S. Capitol Police, who died last night from injuries sustained during Wednesday's riot at the Capitol. His killer deserves nothing less than the full weight of American justice. If there's a silver lining within this tragedy, I hope it's a national awakening to the importance of our law enforcement officers, and a complete & TOTAL rejection of this absurd "defund the police" movement.
 

I really don't care if the mob who stormed the Capitol Building on Wednesday were Trump supporters or not. They're criminals!! Every d**n one of them needs to be identified, arrested, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Period.

 
I'll tell you though: it's refreshing to finally hear universal condemnation of rioting. It would've been helpful if our friends on the left could have expressed similar outrage last summer when BLM, Antifa, and others were tearing apart cities across this nation. I'm glad they've joined our chorus for the time being, because this type of lawlessness has no place in our society.

 
Moving on to the Electoral College certifications, I voted to object to the certifications from Arizona and Pennsylvania. We've been over why in previous posts. I lost track of the number of headlines to the effect of "147 Republicans object to certification even after riots at the Capitol." These stories, of course, are trying to imply the riot should have somehow overridden any objections we had concerning election irregularities. (We have so few real journalists in this nation anymore.) Congress doesn't stand down from the work to be done in the face of unrest – that's not the way things work.

 
Our Constitution is very clear that individual state legislatures must run their own elections. But in certain states, we've seen COVID used as an excuse to change mail-in balloting procedures, change signature verifications, change voting deadlines, change polling procedures, and other questionable practices, often WITHOUT approval of the state legislature. So I believe Congress had a right (and responsibility) to question those certifications.

 
To those who called me a traitor and accused me of "sedition" for asking these questions, I'm confident you harbored no such feelings for people like Congressman Jim Clyburn (D-SC) when he and dozens of other Democrats went through these exact motions with President George W. Bush following the 2004 election.

 
And to those who say, "Well Ralph, there were obviously problems with this election but not enough to change the outcome," I simply ask: How many irregularities are acceptable? How much fraud is tolerable? How many times is it okay for voting policies to be changed without the explicit approval of a state's legislature?

 
Going forward, there must be a nationwide push in every state to address the integrity of our elections. To the extent Congress can help facilitate action, I plan to be on the forefront. We should all be thankful that South Carolina got it right and seems to be a model for other states.

 
And lastly, yes, our nation will have a different president on January 20th. We’ve seen enough from Mr. Biden to know his administration will strongly embrace the tenets of liberalism and socialism, and I will continue to fight that at every turn. But where he's willing to embrace policies that promote freedom, limited government, fiscal responsibility, strong nation defense, and our constitutional rights – he'll find conservative Republicans like me ready to help.