I was going to write about another one of the aspiring Incompetent Elected Officials (probably this idiot) but decided that a current incompetent in the House needs another call out. Yes, it’s Nancy Mace. Again.

Mace, in an interview with TMZ, called for Lindsay Clancy not only to be executed but publicly executed.

Incidentally, it’s also incompetent to agree to be interviewed by TMZ.

“Her children are dead, she should be dead too,” said Mace, a 48-year-old mother of two who was not in the courtroom and has no business shooting off her mouth about a criminal trial in which the accused is supposed to be fairly tried without public figures trying to sway the jury pools and render a verdict without evidence. “She should get the death penalty. It should be public. It should be a public execution.” She also said Clancy “deserves nothing less.”

Uh, Nancy? How does a public execution punish the condemned any more than any other execution? A public execution punishes the public and society, by lowering the standards of civilization to those of the 19th Century, or the Middle Ages. “It could be by firearm, it could be electric chair, I don’t really care,” this lunatic ranted. “She’s a serial killer” and such an execution would serve as a “warning to women everywhere — you don’t kill your kids.”

Can we get technical for a minute, not that Mace cares about little details like the law and vocabulary? Killing three people, adult or child, in the same incident is not a serial killing. I also don’t think an obviously disturbed, though not necessarily legally insane, woman is the correct vehicle for the “Don’t kill your kids” message. Now, public executions of serial killers of their unborn babies, women who have multiple abortions, would send that message, but it would be, you know, unconstitutional in multiple ways.

Also, several news sources, like this one, wrote that Clancy “allegedly” killed her three children. No, she did it, guys, there’s no dispute about it. There is no “allegedly.” Oh, and back to TMZ: do you know what that “news for dumb 15-year -olds” outlet took away from Mace’s interview? “Nancy Mace Uses Offensive Slur While Calling For Lindsay Clancy’s Public Execution.” Guess what the “slur” was?

“Retarded.” The Horror.

A Congresswoman calls for public executions, but what was really outrageous is that she used a politically incorrect term to do it.

Maybe Mace is competent enough to be a leader in this increasingly silly and ignorant country.

Gloria Steinem, the feminist icon, died yesterday at 92. She was undeniably an important historical and cultural figure whose impact on American society was significant and predominantly positive. I’ll leave it to others to discuss that.

However, she was also critical to my understanding of how people drift into unethical habits and conduct, as well as my epiphany regarding the rareness of integrity among public figures, activists and celebrities.

Before Bill Clinton was President, Gloria preached the doctrine of inequality of power in the workplace. A woman could not meaningfully consent to social, intimate or sexual relations with a male boss, because he had so much power over her career and welfare. Sexual relations between male superiors and women who report to them was, she said, without exception, illicit, improper, abusive, and constituted sexual misconduct by the man.

Then came Monica. Feminists considered Bill Clinton an ally: I remember the scene in the Oval office where Bill signed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 1994, handing out pens to jubilant leaders of the feminist movement. When it was beyond denying that Bill had sexually exploited a young female intern; however, Gloria suddenly dreamed up rationalizations to let Clinton, who was and probably still is a serial sexual predator, off the sexual harassment hook.

She did so with gusto, too, in a New York Times op-ed, stunning in its denial of her previous positions. True, she said, there was an apparent imbalance of power between a young White House intern and THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, but “Whatever it was, her relationship with President Clinton has never been called unwelcome, coerced or other than something she sought. The power imbalance between them increased the index of suspicion, but there is no evidence to suggest that Ms. Lewinsky’s will was violated; quite the contrary.”

That was literally the opposite of what she had insisted was the standard before Clinton was useful to her movement. It was also the exact moment that I began thinking about how an objective ethical perspective was missing in our national discourse.

And the last time I cared what Gloria Steinem said or wrote about anything.

The New York Times alerts us (yes, the episode was supposed to be in this post, but there wasn’t space):

“The rate at which mail votes have been rejected for arriving late has ticked up in primaries this year and general elections last year in roughly a dozen states, prompting election officials to worry that the U.S. Postal Service is ill-equipped to deliver ballots in the fall midterms.”

It adds,

“State officials say they worry about the Postal Service’s ability to deliver votes this fall. They are urging voters to mail their ballots early or use drop boxes so their votes count.”

Being disturbed at this revelation, I was hurled into an abyss of worry and concern for our democracy. What could be done to forestall this seemingly unavoidable disaster?

More:

The states studied by The New York Times include some of the most critical battleground House and Senate seats where control of Congress will be determined, as well as key races for governor and secretary of state. The Times obtained data from California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington.

In Wisconsin, which hosts an open race for governor, a competitive House election plus contests for both chambers of the state legislature, lateness accounted for about 5,000 rejected mail ballots in the spring primary this year, or 78 percent of all tossed ballots. During the last spring election, in 2023, the figure was roughly 2,300, or 47 percent of all tossed votes.

The increase is particularly striking when comparing primaries in 2024 and this year. In Michigan’s primary earlier this month, more than 10,000 mail ballots were rejected for arriving after the state’s deadline of 8 p.m. on Election Day. That is nearly double the number of ballots rejected in 2024. In Washington, the number of late-arriving mail ballots increased from about 16,000 to more than 20,000 in the same period.

This terrible. I briefly considered hurling myself out of my office window, but then remembered that it was on the first floor. And then, in the depths of despond, while I pondered weak and weary, a sudden, astounding inspiration came to me like a thunderbolt out the blue!

Why not tell voters to actually go to a polling place and vote in person? It’s a perfect solution! Like so many other brilliant moments of perception, from gravity to the knock-knock joke, once someone says it, it seems so obvious and amazing that nobody came up with it long ago.

Thank you, thank you everyone. But I just happened to be the vessel. It was inevitable that someone would come up with the concept.

In person voting!

It’s so crazy, it just might work!