-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk:80/dt?ac=002830376029449&rtmo=lnFnQAot&atmo=HH HH22NL&pg=/00/11/12/do02.html Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk:80/dt?ac=002830376029449&rtmo=lnFnQAot&a tmo=HHHH22NL&pg=/00/11/12/do02.html">The Sunday Telegraph - Opinion</A> ----- Any week now we'll have a new president By Mark Steyn News: Now Bush calls in the Lawyers to end US farce W ELCOME back to Campaign 2000 Election Update: America's Day Of Decision - Day Six. Florida's having a recount of the recount. New Mexico's slipped back into the "too close to call" column. In Wisconsin and Iowa, the results may be challenged in court. As for Maine, like every other state in the most technologically sophisticated society on earth, it runs its elections like a Ladies' Aid Society rummage sale presided over by three arthritic grannies, but at least they've managed not to misplace the bits of paper, and they have a result: on Tuesday, voters in the Pine Tree State rejected a ballot initiative to legalise assisted suicide - which is bad news only because, in the event of Al Gore becoming President, I'd been planning to drive over and avail myself of the procedure. Meanwhile, this unprecedented constitutional crisis is beginning to look a lot like the last unprecedented constitutional crisis. Greg Craig is back on TV. He first showed up as the acceptable face of Bill Clinton's impeachment team, convincingly making the case that the President was telling the truth when he denied that he'd told the truth about whether he'd lied, and to suggest that he lied when he lied to the grand jury about lying in the civil deposition was quite simply untrue. After this triumph, he then turned up representing L'il Elian Gonzalez's dad. There are 193 million lawyers in America, but Greg gets all the good gigs. Now he's in Florida, fronting for all those simpletons too dim to fill in a straightforward ballot but apparently shrewd enough to keep his business card handy. No doubt they would have called him earlier but they were bewildered by the confusing amount of numbers on the telephone. Might be a class action suit there, too. How determined is Al Gore in this one last all-or-nothing grab? Very. On Thursday, campaign chairman Bill Daley made one of the most extraordinary statements in American political history: "If the will of the people is to prevail," he declared, "Al Gore should be awarded a victory in Florida and be our next President." Dissatisfied with the original count, and now apparently with the first recount, Daley - like Slobo or Ferdinand Marcos - is demanding that they keep counting till they get a result he'll accept. Anything else will be a travesty of a farrago. Outside in the streets, Jesse Jackson - pardon me, "the Reverend Jesse Jackson", as he's always styled on TV, though what with street demos and CNN appearances, he doesn't seem to have much time for ministering these days, except for his occasional sessions as "spiritual adviser" to Hillary and Chelsea Clinton - anyway, out in the streets, the Rev Jesse is leading the protesters in his latest rhyme: at the Democratic Convention, it was "More with Gore", which even the loyalest delegates seemed to think was a bit feeble; down in Palm Beach County, he's subtly reversed his jingle to "Gore got more" - as in votes. The Democrat's former Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, whose somnolent mien is assumed to be a sign of non-partisan elder statesmanship, is complaining of "voting irregularities". Not "fraud" or "malfeasance", which are legal concepts, but "irregularities", a sly term intentionally chosen for its elasticity. So far the only evidence of "irregularities" that the Gore team has offered is that some of their voters aren't up to voting - an inevitable by-product, one would have thought, of Democratic identity-group politics, where you round up your various clients and bus them to the polls en masse, only to find that more than a few are incapable of remembering their instructions. The Gore position is that the election must be decided by letting a few hundred morons vote and re-vote and re-re-vote until they manage to punch the right hole. Republicans may be "the stupid party" but at least the average conservative gun-nut can put a nice clean shot through the correct hole on his ballot from 200 yards. Nonetheless, an "Emergency Committee of Concerned Citizens 2000" has now been formed to take to the barricades, or at any rate to the telephone-sales department of The New York Times. In Friday's Times, their full-page ad declares: "There is good reason to believe that Vice-President Gore has been elected President by a clear constitutional majority of the popular vote and the Electoral College." Underneath the call for a re-vote in Palm Beach County are such distinguished names as Gloria Steinem, Robert DeNiro and Bianca Jagger, as well as Harold Evans, a British newspaper editor whom older readers may dimly recall from the 1970s. I don't know whether Mr Evans took the traditional civics test when he became a US citizen, or whether he was one of those one million Democrat-leaning aliens hustled through the naturalisation process without background checks at the insistence of Vice-President Gore in order that they could vote in the '96 election, but he should know that there is no such thing as a "constitutional majority of the popular vote". The Constitution requires that the President be confirmed by a majority of the Electoral College. But, in his desperate lunge to fulfil his father's ambitions for him, Al Gore believes his (temporary and shrinking) lead in the popular vote gives him the "moral authority" for his legal challenges and assault on the Constitution. The columnist David Frum notes that a week ago, when it looked as if Bush might win the popular vote while Gore might prevail in the Electoral College, one comment-page editor received more than a dozen separate submissions from prominent Democrats arguing that we must respect the great wisdom of the Founding Fathers who devised this tried and tested system sensibly tempering the tyranny of simple majorities, etc. As soon as it became clear that, au contraire, Gore was the people's choice and Bush the man with the Electoral College votes, every single Dem called the editor and yanked his piece. The party is now engaged in a war on the Electoral College. You can understand the Democrats' distaste for federalism: as things stand, Bush has won 30-32 out of 50 states, and, even more impressively, 2,442 of America's 3,066 counties. It's possible to drive from Fort Dick on the California coast in a more or less straight line across the continent to Ocean City, Delaware without passing through a single county that voted for Gore. With the Vice-President's support concentrated in a few metropolitan enclaves on either coast, there's never been a better argument for federalism. Even the Clinton Administration can't abolish the Electoral College between now and mid-December, when the 538 electors are scheduled to vote on a President. But by bankrolling enough lawsuits and demanding enough recounts and talking up Gore's lead in the popular vote to undermine Bush's legitimacy, they have a pretty good shot at deepening the crisis, accelerating the Dow's drop, and then arguing that the only way to end it is to make Al Gore President. All they have to do then is persuade or bully just enough of those 538 electors to make them switch sides: the same tactics worked well during impeachment, when lily-livered Republican Senators were leaned on not to thwart "the will of the people". Meanwhile, the Republicans are making the same mistake they made two years ago: treating as a solemn constitutional, procedural matter what the Democrats regard as political war. George Dubya Bush will take office as the weakest President in 125 years - if he takes office. Right now, I wouldn't bet on it. 170 Perish in alpine inferno Real IRA's 500lb bomb for London is thwarted Hoerner ousted from Arcadia United come out of shell Boom bust boom News - City - Crossword - Alex - Matt © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2000. ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. 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