Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week

38 DAYS UNTIL JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS TAKE THE OATH OF OFFICE

At The Atlantic, Annie Lowrey writes—Stop Worrying About Budget Deficits. Red ink isn’t a problem as long as the country is spending on the right things:

Ten years ago, the United States was clawing its way out of a miserable recession. Washington was running an annual deficit of $1.

Watching the depressing and alarming spectacle of 17 Republican state attorneys general joining Texas’s bad faith, frivolous Supreme Court application to overturn the election in favor of Donald Trump, I am reminded that in September 2015, I wrote a post titled “The Dark Truth of John Boehner’s Resignation.

The balance of power in the Senate, along with how much Joe Biden can accomplish during his first term as president, will be determined solely by a two-race election in Georgia held on Jan. 5. Ironically, the Georgia law requiring a runoff race when no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote in the general election was specifically designed by racist lawmakers to disenfranchise the Black vote.

The Detroit Free Press reports that the Michigan House and Senate buildings will be closed both to staffers and the public on Monday as the state’s electors to the Electoral College meet to cast their votes for the state’s presidential winner, Joe Biden. The Capitol was already expected to be closed to the public during the Electoral College meeting; this new, expanded closure also includes the building’s legislative staff.

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s decision Thursday and ruled 8-0 that there is no statute of limitations on rape in the military, according to a Supreme Court opinion. The decision followed an appellate court’s ruling that made it more difficult for rape victims in the military to obtain justice. In the case, a sergeant in the U.S.