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In the first full study of Florida’s ballots since the election ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled “undervotes” — ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through — to be counted. The study, conducted by the accounting firm of BDO Seidman, counted over 60,000 votes in Florida’s 67 counties, tabulating separate vote totals in several...

Donald Trump has tapped Chris Christie to lead his transition team, which would prepare the political neophyte turned presumptive GOP nominee for the White House if he wins in the general election. “Governor Christie is an extremely knowledgeable and loyal person with the tools and resources to put together an unparalleled Transition Team, one that will be prepared to take over the White House when we win in November,” Trump said in a quote released Monday morning as part of a campaign statement.

WASHINGTON, June 11— The General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said today that ''damage, theft, vandalism and pranks did occur in the White House complex'' in the presidential transition from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush. The agency put the cost at $13,000 to $14,000, including $4,850 to replace computer keyboards, many with damaged or missing W keys. Some of the damage, it said, was clearly intentional. Glue was smeared on desk drawers. Messages disparaging President Bush were left on signs and in telephone voice mail. A few of the messages used profane or obscene language. ''A Secret...

Hey, it was just a harmless prank! No real harm done. Ha! Ha! That is the tone of The Atlantic magazine article explaining away the vandalism performed by the Clinton White House as it transitioned over to the incoming George W. Bush administration. The article is about how tough it is to transition from one White House administration to the next but the real purpose as we shall see is to slam Donald Trump for mishandling a transition that has yet to happen because he hasn't even been nominated yet. First author Russell Berman attempts to explain away a major...

A yearlong investigation into whether Clinton administration aides left the White House in fraternity-party disarray as they vacated the presidential premises has turned up about $15,000 in damage, according to a government report released Tuesday. Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) asked the General Accounting Office last June to look into allegations that Clinton staffers had ripped phone cords from walls, left obscene voicemail messages, defaced bathrooms and vandalized computer keyboards by removing the "W" keys when they left the White House. A number of items, including a 12-inch presidential seal and several antique doorknobs, were assumed stolen. "The Clinton administration treated...

The political scientist who applies the ‘rational choice’ theory of economics to voters says there was a method to the GOP’s primary madness. Go to the source:

At ease in a Manhattan hotel ballroom filled mostly with Democratic women, Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday made a broad appeal for women to support her Senate campaign, casting her Republican opponent, Representative Rick A. Lazio, as a bully in last week's debate and dismissing his tax plan as misleading and mathematically unsound. (snip) Most pointedly, however, Mrs. Clinton exploited an opportunity before a friendly audience of women to make a concerted attack on Mr. Lazio's debate tactics. Many supporters of Mrs. Clinton said they found Mr. Lazio to be pushy and disrespectful during the debate in Buffalo -- bullying her...

"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." – Joseph Stalin (allegedly) One thing in US history is consistent throughout every single election cycle — allegations of voter fraud. These allegations, however, are not the ramblings of a kook with tinfoil wrapped around his head, they are substantiated and reach as high as the Supreme Court. Don't believe it? Ask Al Gore and George W. Bush. If you think that the ruling class would leave it up to the voters to...

Searching old newspapers is one of my favorite pastimes, and I have tried to use them many times to shed light on current events - or to inform readers about how the past is prologue to our very interesting present-day quandaries. Recently, I came across a syndicated column from November 1979 that seemed to point 30 years into the future toward an obscure campaign issue that arose briefly in the 2008 presidential campaign. Though by no means definitive, it provides an interesting insight, at least, into how Chicago politics intersected with the black power movement and Middle Eastern money at...

Business mogul Donald Trump told CNN Wednesday House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should have sought to impeach President Bush when she had the chance. In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Trump said the president and his administration deliberately lied about the Iraq war, and congressional Democrats missed an opportunity to impeach him when the party took control of Congress in 2006. "I was surprised that she didn't do more in terms of Bush and going after Bush," Trump said. "It was almost - it just seemed like she was going to really look to impeach Bush and get him out...

Hollywood star John Cusack has attacked filmmaker Michael Moore for failing to support the Democratic party in the last American presidential elections. Moore, who won the Best Documentary Oscar at this year's Academy Awards for his anti-gun film Bowling For Columbine, threw his backing behind left-wing candidate Ralph Nader in the 2000 elections - but Cusack believes that he should have joined him in tactical support of Democratic candidate Al Gore instead - to ensure Republican George W. Bush was beaten. Cusack explains, "He lost a lot of credibility when he went and campaigned for Ralph Nader because he was...

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a Republican presidential candidate, sparred with MSNBC host Chris Matthews on Wednesday over whether the Supreme Court has become too “partisan” following the high court’s recent decisions on Obamacare and gay marriage.Though he’s done so in the past, Cruz said he’s reluctant to advocate for “judicial retention” elections every eight years. However, he also said he’s tired of seeing some of the justices “not honoring their judicial oaths.”Matthews later insinuated hypocrisy, accusing Cruz of “loving” it when the Supreme Court “seized the presidency in 2000” for former President George W. Bush during the infamous Florida recount...

Election Day is November 5, 2002. Please, Florida, do not forget the HATRED FOR THE CONSTITUTION the Supreme Court of Florida exhibited in November and December of the year 2000. From the SCOFFLAWS website, there is a clear chance for you to replace three of the seven Kangaroo Court Justices: Merit retention is a system of selecting Justices established by the voters when they amended the Florida Constitution in the 1970s. Under merit retention, the Governor appoints new Justices from a list of three to six names submitted by a Judicial Nominating Commission. The Governor must select from the list....

The media didn't talk about it but in the 2000 election contest the Democratic strategy if they couldn't get the vote count to go their way was to tie the results up in the court so that Florida wouldn't be able to field electors. This would have cut 25 electors from Bush's total and given Gore the election. The Florida state legislature was dominated by the Republican party who let it be known that they could appoint the electors and with the Supreme Court decision the Democrats effort to win the election by disenfranchising Florida was shelved. In the primary...

comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year's presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward. Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. ...

Ted Cruz sparred with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews over his proposal for judicial retention elections during an interview on “Hardball” Wednesday night, at one point debating the judicial propriety of allowing ballots to be recounted in Florida during the historically close 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. The Texas Republican senator and presidential candidate said he is “reluctant to call for elections,” adding that it “makes him sad” but that he has done so because “a majority of the justices are not honoring their judicial oaths.” “Is that the solution? Elections?” Matthews countered. “Look, if unelected judges...

Donald Trump, the bombastic builder of Trump towers and Trump gambling casinos, is moving from his reality TV show to the theater of presidential elections. If he survives the first three months of mass media drubbing him and his notorious affliction of ‘leaving no impulsive opinion behind,’ he’s going to be trouble for the other fifteen or so Republican presidential candidates. Already the commentators have derided his massive egotitis – he said “I” 195 times in his announcement speech, not counting the 28 times he said “my” or “mine” or the 22 mentions of “me.” But Trump revels in self-promotion...

DISPATCHES FROM THE AMERICAN FRONT George Bush, Real ManBy James Benton You could see it in his eyes, hear it in his tone Tuesday night in the second half of his State of the Union speech: this was a man not to be trifled with, a man who would see a difficult, dirty business through to the end, and God help anyone who stood against him as he does battle against the foes of America and her ideals. If anyone had doubts about Bush's commitment to victory in the War on Terrorism, they were laid to rest Tuesday night. Rarely...

The 2016 presidential election is attracting an unusually large number of hopefuls. The Republicans will probably field more than a dozen candidates and the Democrats, as many as five. Presently, very few of these supposed contenders have a real chance of becoming president. Republicans Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz are long shots. On the Democratic side, that term applies to everyone but Hillary Rodham Clinton.. ~snip~ If you tell them in private, "You do not have a chance to be president," they will point to underdogs who won, such as Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan, or front-runners who...

"Elizabeth Drew@ElizabethDrewOH 3H...Admin officials told Bibi that if he's reelected, his egregious ambo to US Ron Dermer, co-plotter with Boehner, has to go"