-Caveat Lector- http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/continuous/13SCOTU.html December 12, 2000 Ruling Effectively Gives Election Victory to Bush WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 � Justices were still deliberating this evening, a day after members of the Supreme Court's liberal bloc labored visibly to fashion a compromise in the case of Bush v. Gore that might allow the counting of Florida's presidential votes to resume. After a sober, intense 90-minute session on Monday it appeared far from certain that the Gore legal team had found any customers among the five conservative justices who voted Saturday afternoon to stop the recount just as it was getting under way by order of the Florida Supreme Court. A decision was still possible tonight. For the United States Supreme Court, Monday's arguments were the second in 10 days to come out of the bitterly disputed Florida election. In contrast to the earlier argument, there was a sense now that time was really running out, for the court as well as the two presidential candidates whose photo finish had driven them into a litigation contest as intense as the campaign itself. Twice, Vice President Al Gore prevailed before Florida's Supreme Court, and twice Gov. George W. Bush persuaded the justices to hear an appeal. The focus of the argument this time shifted from the constitutional theories that dominated the argument on Dec. 1 to the practicalities of what was actually happening in Florida during the few hours of manual recounts before the United States Supreme Court's 5-to-4 vote to grant Mr. Bush's request for an emergency stay. What standards were used to determine the intent of the voters? What were the implications of using different standards for different counties? It was on this ground that Justices David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer struggled to find the outlines of a possible compromise. If differing standards raised questions of fundamental fairness, placing the recount under a constitutional cloud, as Mr. Bush's lawyers insisted, then why not just send the case back for imposition of a uniform standard? The two justices received little help from the two lawyers who argued on the Republican side on Monday, Theodore B. Olson for Mr. Bush and Joseph P. Klock Jr. for Katherine Harris, Florida's secretary of state. They came into court as likely winners, on the basis of the justices' action on Saturday, and understandably displayed little interest in helping the court do anything but flatly overturn the Florida Supreme Court ruling last Friday that ordered the new recount. Pressed by Justice Breyer on what a "fair standard" would be for counting punch card ballots on which a machine had found no vote for president, Mr. Olson replied: "That is the job for a legislature." At a minimum, Mr. Olson said when pressed further, "a penetration of the chad in the ballot, because indentations are no standards at all." Some canvassing boards in Florida have counted "dimpled chads" as votes under some circumstances, and others have refused to do so. In ordering a statewide manual recount of the "undervotes," those ballots on which tabulating machines did not find a presidential selection, the Florida Supreme Court did not set a standard, and neither did Judge Terry P. Lewis, the circuit court judge in Leon County who was supervising the recount. Mr. Klock was even more dismissive than his colleague was of the notion that a court might fashion a standard that was not spelled out in the statute. "I don't think the Supreme Court of Florida, respectfully, or any other court can sit down and write the standards that are going to be applied," he said. ================================================================= Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: *Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends ================================================================= <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! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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