-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! CONGRESS ACTION: December 3, 2000 ================= TIME FOR THEM TO GO: During debates in the Constitutional Convention over the Electoral College, James Madison said that election of the President by the Judiciary ". was out of the question." Al Gore lost the election. Yet he persists in his quest to have the Florida Judiciary overturn the certified election results, and appoint him president. Gore is not merely pursuing election to higher office. His talk about "good of the nation" and "will of the people" is simply a cover for his obsession to attain power by means of judicial fiat -- some are calling it a judicial coup d' etat. Some on the radical left are saying that no matter how the United States Supreme Court rules, that ruling will not end Gore's election contest. They have other options that they will pursue. The Gore camp has said that they will never accept the Florida legislature appointing Electors -- Lieberman himself has said that would precipitate a Constitutional crisis. Congressman Jerrold Nadler (who said that republicans exercising their First Amendment rights has a "whiff of fascism") has said that the designation of Electoral College Electors should not be left to an "elitist, undemocratic" body such as Florida's elected legislature, but should be decided instead, apparently, by the (presumably, in Nadler's fantasy world, non-elitist and democratically chosen) Florida Supreme Court. Democrats certainly will oppose the United States Congress certifying Bush's Electors from Florida. And even after the Electors are chosen, there is an effort afoot to induce Electors across the country to change their votes. So no matter what happens, no matter which institution decides this matter, if that decision is against Gore, then neither Gore nor the rest of the democrats will accept it. Think hard about that truly dangerous stance. When there is no legally constituted civil institution in the nation that will be accepted by the democrats as a legitimate final arbiter -- not an elected state legislature, not an elected national legislature, not even the highest court in the land -- what is left to settle this matter with finality? What does it say about the character of a man who is that obsessed with becoming president? Are there no responsible democrats left who will stand up and tell Al Gore that it is time for him to go? Apparently not, because the democrats -- and the increasingly hysterical media -- continue to up the ante, now engaged in a very dangerous game of shouting "illegitimate". Leading the irresponsible democrats is Senator Tom Daschle, who said that no matter what happens, he will continue re-counting ballots into next year, when he will no doubt announce that -- lo and behold! -- he "found" just enough more votes so that Gore should really be the President. If you say "illegitimate" often enough, the risk is that it could become a self-fulfilling prophesy. If President Bush's legitimacy is later doubted by our enemies around the world, it will be because democrats like Daschle shouted "illegitimate" too often. But does anyone really think that Gore would be seen as legitimate -- by anyone -- if he succeeds in having a court overturn the certified results of an election and install him in the White House? It's time for him to go. RECOUNT CHARADE: The democrat mantra that they just want all votes to count is a red herring. All of the valid votes have already been counted, several times -- except, of course, for those overseas military votes that the democrats excluded from the count. Democrats who are claiming that ten thousand-plus ballots "were never counted" are, quite simply, lying. Those ballots indeed were counted, twice, by machine. To say that they were not counted is to say that the majority of votes in the entire state of Florida "were never counted" because they, too, were counted by machine. Gore's problem is that when they were counted, they registered votes for other offices but no votes for president. These are the so-called "undervoted" ballots. So on the basis of assuming to know what the voters really intended, Gore wants someone to hand recount those ballots and simply assign those votes to him. Anyone who thinks that the hand re-counted ballots are in any way legitimate (either those previously done over the past weeks, or those ten thousand-plus that the democrats say "were never counted"), is either lying to themselves or is willfully ignorant. That's because those hand recounts involve guessing what the voters might have intended when they cast those undervoted ballots. One county's standard for divining voter intent was that if a ballot indicated clear votes for a majority of the other democrats on the card, then the voter must have intended to vote for Gore and was simply unable to do so properly. Thus a new vote for president is created where none existed before and a vote for Gore is recorded. Since the ballots hand re-counted in this way are all from carefully selected, heavily democrat counties and districts within those counties, and since democrat partisans make the final decisions, the vast majority of such newly created votes naturally turn out to be for Gore. In another county the standard was just the opposite -- if the rest of the ballot was clearly marked, then the voter was obviously able to vote properly, so that no clear choice for president means that no choice was made, on purpose. It is this latter standard that Gore's lawyers want a court to overturn for the new recount, trotting out "experts" (like the guy who invented a machine similar to the type used -- but not the type that was actually used, making his opinion irrelevant) to claim that a machine defect might have (no evidence from the actual machines that any such defect actually existed) allowed voters to punch holes more easily on the right side of the ballot than on the left -- presidential -- side of the ballot. Convenient. And calling on statistical experts using the previous, fundamentally flawed hand recounts to "prove" the need for more fundamentally flawed hand recounts. For that process -- for those new votes -- to have any validity at all requires a basic assumption. It requires the assumption that every single voter who went to the polls, cast a vote for president. In other words, that the great mass of "undecided voters" that we heard so much about before the election simply ceased to exist on election day -- and they all voted for Gore -- and that on election day, no one abstained from voting for president. To invalidate this assumption, it is not necessary to believe that a lot of voters actually abstained from voting for president -- it is only necessary to believe that it is possible that one voter might have abstained. For Gore's new votes to be legitimate, one must believe that not one single voter in all of Florida remained undecided about the presidential candidates, and only voted for the other candidates. Because once it is conceded that one voter -- ONE VOTER -- might have abstained from voting for president, once it is conceded that the act of partial voting is humanly possible because one voter did it, then it must be conceded that more than one voter might have done it. How many voters actually did it is anyone's guess. And that's what makes the whole process of hand re-counting "undervotes" and pretending to divine voter intent from scratches and dents wholly, totally illegitimate -- because it is just a guess. To accept those votes as valid requires assuming that the vote counters can divine the exact thought processes of the voters while those voters were standing in the voting booths. That's what happens when the standards of what constitutes a legitimate vote are changed after the fact. And that is exactly what the Florida Supreme Court permitted, and exactly what the county canvassing boards did -- they changed the standards for what constitutes a valid vote, often changing those standards several times, after the election was over. That Texas may or may not count hanging or dimpled or pregnant chads as legitimate votes, or provide for hand re-counts under certain circumstances, is irrelevant -- the votes are being counted in Florida pursuant to Florida law, not Texas law. And Florida, before this election, did not count those as valid votes. The Florida Supreme Court, and the county canvassing boards, have thrown the standards out, and have invented their own new, ever-changing standards, after the election was over. The facts are simple: There was an election, ALL THE VALID VOTES WERE COUNTED, and Gore lost. There was a recount pursuant to law, by the duly constituted and publicly elected authorities of Florida, and Gore lost. In some districts there were several more whole or partial recounts, and Gore lost. Gore is now trying to have lawyers and judges overturn the results of the election, overturn the vote count and the recounts, override the law and ignore all previous standards, and declare him President. Gore won nothing. He is trying to hide behind lawyers, judges, and recount partisans pretending to divine what the voters "really intended". Despite the multi-pronged assault by Team Gore on the electoral process, and on truth itself, Bush STILL won the Electoral vote (and may have also won the popular vote). Just imagine what a Bush landslide it would have been if this election had been fair and honest. Democrat rhetoric about honoring the Rule of Law is sheer sophistry. State and federal laws have been ignored, altered, modified, perhaps even rewritten -- always in Gore's favor. Florida's election process since the beginning has been controlled by democrats -- ballots designed by democrats, counting and canvassing boards dominated by democrats. Yet the counts and recounts keep coming out favoring Bush. The new extended deadline for recounts, more than doubling the original deadline set by law, was what Team Gore asked for from the democrat-dominated Florida Supreme Court, yet he now calls that new deadline unfair and wants to ignore it as well. How many more times shall the rules be changed? As Bill Bennett put it, the Rule of Law does not mean Rule by Litigation. You cannot just keep changing the rules after the fact until you get the outcome that you want, and call it honoring the Rule of Law. State legislatures have the Constitutional duty to appoint Electoral College Electors. Florida's legislature held hearings this week on how they might, and if they should, exercise that duty. Flown in to testify at those hearings, by the Democrat National Committee, were 70 citizens who whined about how confusing it all was, how unfair. One man said that for the 60 years he has been voting, the democrat was always on line two, so he just marked the ballot on line two -- "I don't even look at it. What for?" Yet he seeks to be excused for such incompetence, such negligence. The next speaker pleaded, "Please take care of us". The nation and the presidency are being held captive to the most ignorant, incompetent, and helpless among us, and to the man whose idea of governing is to pander to them. Do these hapless people represent only Gore's natural constituency? Or do they represent what our entire nation has become -- ignorant, incompetent, helpless, and yet arrogantly certain that they are entitled to guide the nation's destiny? SEMINOLE COUNTY ABSENTEES: One of the blizzard of lawsuits in Florida involves absentee ballot applications in Seminole County. The suit alleges that republican operatives took about 4700 applications for absentee ballots and added voter identification numbers that had been omitted by the applicants. Similar issues were raised in Martin County, where voter ID numbers were supposed to be added automatically by computer to the nearly 10,000 applications before they were sent to the voters, but a software glitch omitted the ID numbers on about 500. There is no claim in either county that the ballots themselves were in any way even touched by anyone improper, just that the application forms for obtaining those ballots were corrected. There is no claim that the votes are fraudulent. Yet a democrat voter (allegedly unconnected with Gore) has filed suit claiming improprieties so serious that the remedy he seeks is to throw out every absentee ballot in Seminole County -- nearly 15,000 -- which would reduce President-elect Bush's statewide vote total by approximately 5000, throwing the election to Gore with a commanding lead. It is not claimed that all 15,000 ballot applications were corrected by the republicans, only about one-third were so affected. But since nobody knows which ones they were, all must be eliminated, or so reasons the lawsuit. There are laws in Florida, as in every state, that prohibit tampering with ballots in any way, but this suit does not involve ballots, only applications for ballots. The State's Attorney for Seminole County has said that no criminal complaints have been filed against the Seminole County election supervisor blamed for allowing the republicans access to the applications in the first place; and the State's Attorney further said, based on his reading of the law, that he's not sure what law was broken. But assuming that some law or laws were broken, the issue then becomes, what is the proper remedy? Is throwing out all 15,000 votes, because 4700 applications were improperly marked, a proportionate remedy, or even a rational remedy? Florida law provides a series of penalties for a variety of violations of absentee election laws. All involve tampering with ballots, a far more serious offense than marking applications. But even if a court somehow determines that the ballots themselves were tampered with -- a decision that is clearly not supported by the evidence, or even by the allegations -- then the defendant would be guilty, under the Florida Code, of either a third degree felony (5 years in jail and a $5000 fine), or of a first degree misdemeanor (1 year jail and a $1000 fine). Nowhere does the statute provide for a disqualification of the votes themselves -- because nobody is claiming that the votes are fraudulent. To suggest that a judge would punish -- disenfranchise, in the parlance of the day -- 10,300 voters who had nothing whatsoever to do with the situation at all (who sent back properly filled out application forms and filed properly executed ballots), because some people modified the applications for a different set of 4700 ballots, is ludicrous. Then again, activist judges rarely consider themselves bound by law, evidence, or convention, when they see an ideological outcome that they intend to achieve. Team Gore denies any involvement with the Seminole suit. It would be foolish for them to argue that all votes must be counted in democrat counties, but that 15,000 votes must be excluded in republican counties. Not that hypocrisy is foreign to Gore -- recall that democrats organized a concerted effort to exclude the overseas military ballots while simultaneously claiming that all votes must be counted. But if the court excludes those votes, Gore would no doubt put on his best "That's so sad but the law is the law" face in public; while in private he would be unable to contain his glee. LAWYERIZATION OF AMERICA: The performance of Team Gore over the past weeks has given the nation an up-close look at the legal morass that our nation has become -- the lawyerization of America. One of the last remaining exercises in self government that is supposed to be decided by the people themselves -- the election of our government representatives -- is in the hands, not of the voters, but of lawyers and courts. The Rule of Law is essential to the survival of civilization, and lawyers and courts are necessary instruments of the system of Laws. But the lawyers and the courts are no longer acting as servants of the Law or of the people, they have elevated themselves to Masters of the Universe. Laws enacted by legislatures are often -- usually -- arcane and difficult for people not trained in the law to understand, but it is a very different matter when it comes to the United States Constitution. The Constitution was intentionally written for simplicity -- so that ordinary citizens could clearly understand the nature of their government and the scope of their rights, without the intervention of a priesthood of lawyers and judges "interpreting" those rights for them. But we have allowed ourselves to be duped into thinking that we are incapable of understanding our Constitution. How many Americans can say that they have ever actually read the Constitution? The entire Constitution comprises a mere 4430 words. The Bill of Rights comprises 486 words. Even in this age of dumbed-down education, surely 4916 words isn't too complicated for Americans to comprehend -- especially when our freedom depends on it. If Americans ever sat down and read their essential founding documents, they would be astonished at how simple and straightforward those documents are. And, just perhaps, they would rise up in righteous indignation at how far off course our government has strayed -- at how much our national government has exceeded and abused its authority. ELECTION SCANDAL: Close examination of this election has revealed that our electoral system is rife with fraud and improprieties from top to bottom. It is not at all unreasonable to assume that across the nation, votes were lost, stolen, miscounted, and improperly (and illegally) induced. Hoards of votes are cast by people who have no business (even if they have a legal right) voting -- convicted felons; legal and illegal aliens; and newly minted citizens fast-tracked under Gore's own programs, who have no loyalty to, or even a rudimentary understanding of, our Constitutional system; and whose only loyalty lies with ever-expanding wealth transfer programs and spreading socialism. Motor Voter laws easily register people who can't bother to expend any effort to register themselves, and thus can't be expected to expend any effort to educate themselves about the issues in an election -- perfect targets for demagogues. Laws inhibit the ability of local election boards to remove voters from the rolls who should no longer be registered, because they died or moved away; and laws and left-wing agitators prevent local election officials from even verifying the identity of those casting votes. Absentee ballots -- the very ability to vote itself for many citizens -- are tightly controlled and arbitrarily dispensed by partisan and petty local bureaucrats. And every time we hear the word "recount" from now on, we will picture partisan officials pretending to read minds, and holding ballots up to heaven hoping for divine inspiration. President-elect Bush has some good legislative ideas involving taxes, Social Security, Medicare, and the rest of the usual litany that we have heard so much about over the past many months of this campaign. But priority number one for his administration should be to dismantle the entire structure of laws and practices that grant multiple advantages in the electoral process to the left, and reconstruct the process in a fair and rational manner that allows every ideological argument to be freely and fairly heard and evaluated in an open marketplace of ideas. And that includes resolutely rejecting any campaign finance reforms that have the effect of stifling one entire ideology, and granting access to that marketplace of ideas to only one party. Our electoral process is a mess, and the survival of our Constitution, our republic, and our freedom, demands top to bottom reform. FOR MORE INFORMATION. ======================== United States Supreme Court (decision expected next week): http://www.supremecourtus.gov/ http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/index.html http://www.findlaw.com/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mr. Kim Weissman [EMAIL PROTECTED] *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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