Re: Making Sense of It All

[TursiopsAmicus]

The Republicans were just engaging in a bunch of hypocritical, legal
technicalities...

I won't go as far with details as you did John, but will highlight the major
points.

Gore wanted all votes counted.  His lawyers argued all the way to the Florida
supreme court that he be given the opportunity to hand-count the votes in
3-counties and that those counts truly apply to the results.  For purposes of
*equal protection*, *the Florida Supreme Court* ordered that in addition to
the votes in those 3 counties, statewide undervotes be counted, so as not to
exclude Bush counties.  Overvotes were moot, because two votes on the same
ballot automatically nullifies the vote by state law (and as hard as it is to
get these hanging chads to register, I am pretty sure no one would argue the
double votes were machine error).  In the *reasoning* for the decision, not
the decision itself, the Florida Supreme court allegedly violated Florida
law.  I'll come back to this later.

In a seperate lawsuit filed by a group of democrats (without the support of
Gore) an arguement was made that absentee ballots should be thrown out
because Republicans had *illegally* added information which was excluded on
the application for absentee ballots, information that was *required by
Florida Law* in order for the application to be valid.  In this case,
*Bush's* Lawyers argued that *every vote should count, regardless of minor
legal technicalities*, where Bush's Lawyers argued that the undervotes should
not count because of (wait for it) *legal technicalities*.

I am of the opinion (an opinion stated in the desents of 2 of the justices),
that even if the Florida State Supreme Court was wrong in their decision, the
Supreme Court had *no* business intervening in an issue of State Law.  (if
you have read the constitution, you should also know that any power not
delegated to the nation by the constitution and laws are the power of the
state and local governments)  This was an issue of state law, and state
power, and in such cases, the *State* Supreme Court should be *the final
voice*.  *The Supreme Court* violated the constitution by intervening in this
case (but who can you appeal that to huh?).  This was not a matter of law or
justice, it was partisan politics as usual, period.

Another problem with only a 2 party system, not enough impartial votes in
important legal decisions.  It doesn't really matter though, Bush likely
would have won once the recount was completed anyway, because Gore was not
gaining ground with the statewide undervotes anyway, but I think the manner
of "victory" was quite despicable.

I particularly love the despicable things Bush is doing with his cabinet
picks.  Asking Democratic *Senators* to join his cabinet "to bridge the party
gap".  Ha!  He's just doing that to give the Republicans a majority of the
senate again by trying to strip away a Democratic senator and replace him
with a Republican one.  It's just partisan politics as usual.

(I would have criticized the democrats as well, but I think John did a good
enough job of that)

Michael Harney
[EMAIL PROTECTED]