We have Newsmax watchers who find Fox News liberal and deep-state.
They regale each other with malignant tales of a corrupt America executing a fraudulent election to steal the presidency from the brave magnificence of Donald Trump as represented legally by the heroic brilliance of Rudy Giuliani.
This column is for them, not that many of them--or any--bother to visit this space. But one must try one's best when one is favored with a forum. Only the democratic republic is at stake.
If these America-hating Trumpians will only read this far, then I will get this chance to invite them to abandon this essay if they must, but to go more productively to this link: www2.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/203371np.pdf.
There they may read the ruling of three Republican-nominated federal appeals court judges--one, the author, a Trump nominee--on the Trump campaign's summarily rejected attempt to throw out hundreds of thousands of mailed votes in Pennsylvania.
The Trump nominee who authored the three-judge panel's ruling, Stephanos Bibas, writes well.
So, let us say good for Trump for doing one thing right, which was nominating a judge who would put him in his place with such powerful clarity.
Bibas wrote with the agreement of the two other judges on his panel, both George W. Bush nominees. One was the appellate court's chief judge, D. Brooks Smith, and the other Michael A. Chagares.
The Trump campaign argued for throwing out hundreds of thousands of mail-in votes in Pennsylvania because Pennsylvania allowed early mail-in voters to fix technical errors in their paperwork. The campaign also argued that, in some counties, election-day officials told poll watchers--for both parties--to stand farther back to watch than some of the Trump watchers apparently wanted, or at least contended after the fact that they had wanted.
Those were the issues. Well, there was one other more basic one, which was whether the Trump campaign could amend its suit, which had already been amended once, to keep trying to come up with a decent argument.
No one was daring to go into a federal courtroom to defile it by arguing that long-dead Hugo Chavez had anything to do with stealing Trump's presidency for socialists or that a voting machine company had installed devices programmed to eat Trump votes and make up Joe Biden ones.
Those are wild accusations that Trump, Giuliani and Newsmax watchers say only in the comfortable context of Twitter, news-conference spectacles and fervently believed but tragically misinformed private conversations happening across this once-great land.
The Trump campaign specifically questioned far fewer than Biden's 81,000-vote margin in Pennsylvania. But the Trump campaign wanted to throw all mail votes out because ... well, because then the president might carry Pennsylvania.
In case Newsmax watchers have read this far, allow me to quote from the ruling linked above and written by the Trump-nominated appeals court judge.
He wrote: "Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here. ...
"As lawyer Rudolph Giuliani stressed, the campaign 'doesn't plead fraud.'"
Let's stop there for a second to repeat for emphasis. In a federal courtroom, the face-striped creature alleging fraud in a news conference ... did not allege fraud.
He argued instead that Pennsylvania was too nice to mail-in voters, letting them fix their voter-form errors when time permitted, and only allowed poll workers of both persuasions inside the polling places at a distance, not over the shoulders of poll workers.
The Trump-nominated judge continued by making the point that the election was run under Pennsylvania law, adding, "Pennsylvania law is willing to overlook many technical defects. It favors counting votes as long as there is no fraud," which, remember, Giuliani, when in court, specifically said the Trump campaign was not alleging.
The Trump-nominated judge wrote that the Trump campaign's proposed remedy for its non-fraud complaints--to throw out hundreds of thousands of mailed votes--would be "drastic" and "unprecedented," and would affect all down-ballot races, few if any of which anyone was arguing about.
Bear in mind--again--that these were federal appeals court judges nominated in presumed advancement of the conservative judicial mantra to protect the unborn and defend religious liberties against gay people forcing them to sin, or something like that.
It turns out that they also stand up for our democratic republic against a seeming coup.
It is a glorious thing. We have teetered on the precipice of a constitutional crisis. The executive branch has been trying to destroy our democracy and steal an election. The semi-controlling Republican side of the legislative branch has been unwilling to stand up to the lawless executive.
What has saved us thus far are brave state-level election officials receiving death threats ... and judges.
I'd praise lawyers as well as judges, except that Giuliani is a lawyer.
There is no honor in taking Trump's nonsense into a courtroom. There is only honor in swatting it away.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.