Nadine - To your last point - The decision reached by SCOTUS rendered moot the law of recounts as it existed in Florida prior to the election, which is exactly the result they at first said was impermissible. What they really meant to say was that it is impermissible to use inconsistent recounting standards, or to change the law as it existed prior to election day by interpreting what it meant and adding more specific guidelines to the general standard that the legislature enacted (and the the US Supreme Court eventually found wanting), but ONLY if it costs Dubya the election. Because, you see, the 5-4 vote was 99% political and 1% jurisprudential -- its relationship with the law appears limited to the four dissents, and the fact that lawyers brought the case and heard it. If Gore had been ahead by 1,000 votes and Bush had been asking for the recounts in three heavily GOP counties with major statistical anomalies, a Democratic state official affiliated with the Gore campiagn tried to shut them down, and the FSC had ruled that they must go forward, you can bet the farm that the USSC would have, by unanimous decision, ruled that the Federal Courts have no business telling a state supreme court what to do on an issue of state law, and that the federal issues raised were not significant enough to intervene. Because the 4 so-called liberals would not have changed their view, but the 5 so-called conservatives had a political agenda to implement -- and at least THAT result would have been closer to their judicial philosophy of federal judicial restraint than the abomination they eventually settled on. Of course, Gore would not have challenged the recounts in the same way that Bush did, despite the right wing rhetoric about how Gore would say and do anything to win -- as it turns out, it was Dubya they were talking about all along.
Now, on a different topic, so that we don't take the wrong message from this election, this column in today's Washington Post is a must read, and says it all:
washingtonpost.com
Every time Ari Fleischer (who is going to have a tough 4 years) says "this is what the American people elected President Bush to do", I want to throw a ripe tomato at the camera -- 5 justices of the Supreme Court elected Dubya -- the American people, by contrast, elected Albert Gore, by a much wider margin than the GOP will ever admit.
MST |
