Posted on 01/26/2007 4:29:09 AM PST by theothercheek
Over the past few days, three Supreme Court justices defended their 2000 decision to overturn a ruling of the Florida Supreme Court to halt the recount of Florida's disputed election results, thus allowing George W. Bush to claim the state’s 25 electoral votes and victory in the presidential race, The Associated Press reports.
"A no-brainer! A state court deciding a federal constitutional issue about the presidential election? Of course you take the case," Justice Anthony Kennedy said in an interview published in the just-published book "Supreme Conflict," by ABC News correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg.
Retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor told Greenburg that the Florida court was "off on a trip of its own," by which she meant that the recount violated the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause because the counties involved in the recount were not following the same set of standards to determine whether to count a vote.
In a Q&A session following a speech at Iona College in NY, Justice Antonin Scalia said, "It's water over the deck - get over it."
Justice Clarence Thomas and the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist joined Justices Scalia, Kennedy and O'Connor in voting to stop the recount.
The Stiletto agrees with Justice Scalia that it’s high time people put the 2000 election behind them. To move on as it were. Maybe she’ll start a Web site to help people get past the rancor and divisiveness of that long-ago election. It would need a pithy name to generate traffic. What about, oh, MoveOn.org?
Editorial Note: Notice AP’s lede (emphasis, The Stiletto’s): "Three of the five Supreme Court justices who handed the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000 …" But AP wasn’t done editorializing in its "news" story: "Rather than by a direct vote of the people, the U.S. president is elected under an arcane two-centuries-old system of electors."
Plus that every subsequent recount showed Bush winning, and those were done by the liberal press.
Yup.
Still Whining and crying.
Arcane? Well, I guess if the elector part of the system is arcane, then so are all the other parts of the Constitution too, being that it was written about the same timeframe. But of course, we all know AlGore would have trashed the entire system if it was up to him to be "elected".
"Still Whining and crying."
Bunch of biatches.
No mention in the article about military votes not being counted.
I see the AP run this kind of cr*p maligning the Electoral College System, and I wonder if they've ever seriously considered the consequences of abandoning that system? Here's just a few thoughts:
1. NEVER ever expect to see a Presidential Candidate travel to anything less than a densely populated area. Why waste time where few American voters can be addressed?
2. If we ever had a REALLY CLOSE election, the recount would have to be done EVERYWHERE! Imagine Florida November 2000 expanded to ever voting precinct in the country.
I'm sure there are many other points that can be made, but these two just jump to the front of the line. Three cheers for the Electoral College (and the Supreme Court)! They spared us Algore!
Yeah -remember he was the one who exposed the election - the will of the people - to the vagaries of the legal system in the first place.
Were they ever counted? I do not recall whether that consortium of newspapers that did their own recount - which Bush also won - included the military votes. It's funny how Dems are always pushing to give felons the right to vote while at the same time pushing to have our soldiers, sailors and airmen disenfranchised. Trust them with the presidency? No way.
Don't knock it. The whining worked. I know many college students convinced that the 2000 election was fixed. Clinton/Gore did everything possible to fix it their way and then cranked up the machine to cry and start the lawsuits.
I don't know why the Democrats should quit something that works. And then the GOP plays RINO after we elect them with our donations. This is a neat game.
After the election it was shameful that republicans had no idea how to run the Congress with their majority.
I dont know if it was ignorance or simple incompetence,but they lost the momentum within a week.
You are right. The advantage was thrown away due to poor leadership from Bush, Trent Lott, et al.
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