One thing that Gloria Borger and CNN omitted in their special re: the 2000 selection was O'Connor's

[Uncle Joe]

2013 admission that the U.S. Supreme Court was wrong in hearing the case, it should have been left up to the state of Florida.

Now she tells us. More than 12 years after the fact, retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said it was probably a mistake for the Supreme Court to hear Bush v. Gore and anoint George W. Bush as president of the United States.

“It took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue,” Justice O’Connor told the Chicago Tribune editorial board on Friday. “Maybe the court should have said, ‘We’re not going to take it, goodbye.’”

She continued: “Obviously the court did reach a decision and thought it had to reach a decision. It turned out the election authorities in Florida hadn’t done a real good job there and kind of messed it up. And probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day.”

The result, she allowed, “stirred up the public” and “gave the court a less than perfect reputation.”

Justice O’Connor’s comments, as fascinating as they are, have to set some kind of record for detachment (she calls the court on which she sat for 25 years “it” — avoiding the more apt “we”) and also for understatement.

Granted, we don’t know for sure whether Justice O’Connor wanted to take Bush v. Gore. Only four justices have to agree to hear a case. But we do know that she sided with the majority on the actual decision, which stopped the recounting in Florida and gave a one-vote majority in the Electoral College to the man who lost the national popular vote. The ruling was a huge stain on the court’s reputation because it appeared to be — may well have been — blatantly partisan.

(snip)

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/oconnor-regrets-bush-v-gore/?_r=0

[YvonneCa]

1. The CNN documentary was very superficial. It...

...left out a lot of detail and substituted opinion for the facts..IMHO.

[Uncle Joe]

3. I agree, Yvonne, I never expected much more from CNN, they didn't bring up the disparities in voting

long lines for minorities as compared to affluent and largely white areas and the active vote suppression against African Americans in the state of Florida.

They relegated any moral meaning of democracy to who fought the better fight, it was basically a message of "might makes right."

[YvonneCa]

4. Exactly. Their 'We Dems brought a knife to...

...a gun fight' was pathetic. The extent of the willingness on the part of the GOP to subvert democracy to get their way still shocks me. The guy ...Stipanovich..was on with Don Lemon afterward and said they were preventing a coup. What a jerk!

[grasswire]

11. yes, I started a thread about that jerk.

Worst person in the world.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

2. Geez..Gloria Borger is as close to a moron as anyone on TV. The

documentary was sickening to me - just watched it.

Biggest mistake - Democrats acting like the WHOLE thing was on the up and up. How naive of us !

[haikugal]

5. When was that?

We all knew the entire thing was bogus! ALL of it!! I don't consider that naive at all.

[Art_from_Ark]

18. I think that person is talking about Senate Democrats

who didn't lift a finger to contest the results after the USSC decision.

[haikugal]

22. Ahhh, thanks Art.....

Yeah we were naive to think they gave a damn about us. That I agree with. It's been made plain as day....

[Laura PourMeADrink]

23. And I assume you were in charge of advising Gore - telling him that he came

up short and that he should concede?

[haikugal]

24. Sorry but I don't get your point...

Can you be more clear?

I was responding to this...


Biggest mistake - Democrats acting like the WHOLE thing was on the up and up. How naive of us !


Art's comment clarified your statement for me. Did you mean something else?

[Laura PourMeADrink]

25. How can Art clarify what I meant? By Democrats I meant those involved

and advising Gore on election night and the days shortly thereafter. Those who believed that the results were on the up and up. That Jeb didn't manipulate the vote somehow. That our side believed that it was over and that they had to man up and concede as was custom. This was naive and all happened while the other side immediately went into conniving mode. They knew that if they "acted" like they had won it would give the impression that they did win. If our side had been more savvy and did the same - there wouldn't have been a pervasive Sore Loser Man meme.

To me, this is where the election was lost.

[haikugal]

26. Thank You...that helps.

I don't know what was going on with all the people around Gore with this issue. All I remember was there being a real question as to who won and being totally at odds with Gores decision to concede.

Everyone I know was supportive of waiting for the count, even with the problems.

I have a hard time believing the Gore camp were so naive that they didn't suspect something with all the theatrics that were going on. We were suspicious so why do we assume he wasn't?

Our justice system has been trashed and 'laws' mean little if they are not enforced across the board. This entire issue has been ignored by everyone who could make a difference from both sides of the aisle. We The People have been cut out.

I haven't seen the documentary that is discussed here yet. When it hits youtube I'll check it out but it appears to be less than complete in it's analysis of the 2000 election process and what really happened.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

27. The documentary was not very enlightening - it wasn't hard hitting or

investigatory it was pretty much CNN letting each side spin the whole thing the way they wanted - what they wanted the world to see.

Don't remember who the Gore adviser was, but one of them said they called the limo as Gore was on his way to a hotel to concede and told him not to - but he did anyway. Of course, CNN didn't dig to see who was in the limo with him - perhaps that is documented somewhere else. Perhaps it was even Gore who insisted ?

Just think how the world would have been so much different from that moment on if Dimson hadn't been elected.

[haikugal]

28. I do too.

The fact that this issue is still hanging there without any resolution or effort to prevent a repeat says volumes about the system as presently established. It feels like there was a coup.

[grasswire]

9. we brought a knife to a gun fight

....and Lieberman said something about someone urging him and Gore to preserve their reputations by capitulating. "You are young; you have a political future, don't be a sore loser."

Damn.

[grasswire]

6. I think there was a lot left out.

They didn't point out that the Brooks Bros mob was all Bush staffers and that the Sore Loserman protesters were freepers.

[Uncle Joe]

7. Yes, they left that out as well, grasswire.

[Art_from_Ark]

19. And one of the Florida judges involved in the disputed

later accepted an invitation to a freeper event in Hilton Head, South Carolina, but was forced to cancel once it became publicly known.

[Octafish]

21. Did they mention the nice CIA man who tampered FLA ballots on behalf of teh GOP?

Charles Kane took his experiences to do nice things in Ukraine, too.

Back in the U.S.S.R.

"CIA" Helpful in Florida, Ukraine Elections

December 8,2004 -Venice, FL.
by Daniel Hopsicker

A retired CIA agent, whose illegal and unfettered access to election rolls in Martin County Florida was a major source of legal contention after the 2000 Election, traveled to the Ukraine four years earlier to teach “grass-roots politics” to people there, The MadCowMorningNews has learned.

The news came even as citizens in the Ukraine celebrate their new-found freedom, while in the U.S. suspicion continued to fester that vote fraud may have cost Americans their own right to free and honest elections.

In a bitterly ironic twist, Charles Kane, former Director of Security at the Central Intelligence Agency, and member of the Florida Republican Executive Committee, spent four days in Kiev, the capital of the former Soviet republic, hosting training sessions for Ukrainian political parties in 1996.

Institute officials chose Kane to go to the Ukraine, according to the February 20, 1996, Stuart/Port St. Lucie News, apparently straight-faced, “because of his experience in grass-roots campaigns.”

Four years later, Kane’s credentials as a proponent of democracy were receiving much closer scrutiny...

CONTINUED...

http://www.madcowprod.com/12092004.html

Remember, it looks like democracy.

[Samantha]

8. Well, I said that at the time, Uncle Joe, but no one listened

It is right there in the U.S. Constitution that Presidential elections will be conducted by the states as long as each has a state constitution defining the rules (prior to the election, of course). The State of Florida did in fact have a state constitution but two years prior to Election 2000, it amended that state constitution.

There was a prominent election (I believe of a mayor) which ended in a dispute. The perceived winner took office, and the loser sued. Some time later, it was discovered that the loser had in fact won, the person who was in office had to leave and the person winning the suit took office. This caused such an outrage, it was decided that new rules had to be written to outline how to dispute the results of an election, how it would be decided whether or not a recount was in order, and lastly how to conduct a recount. The new rules were inserted in the state constitution. I believe a clerical error was made and the old rules were not deleted. But I only found this out through pulling the document up on line.

Enter Election 2000. The Bush camp in explaining its conduct quoted the OLD rules. The Gore camp abided by the NEW rules.

No one, and I do mean no one I ever heard ever discussed this precise problem. But when one looked up quoted material by the Bush camp, there it was in the state constitution. Same for quotes from the Gore camp.

And the result of this was that everyone lost, but mostly the United States of America lost. The proper handling of this situation should have been that Florida's Slate of Electoral College Votes should not have been counted by the Electoral College itself because by the time this was discovered, it was too close to the date of the election event to change the rules.

Sam

[JonLeibowitz]

13. Fascinating. Truly fascinating.

Thank you so much for posting. Can you point me to some of the source material? That is, the old and new sets of rules? I now really want to read more on this.

[Samantha]

17. I pulled all the information off the internet as it happened, including the Florida State

Constitution. I also found that story about the mayoral race being contested on the Internet after hearing someone mention it. I got confirmation of it from my brother who lives in Florida and who is a Republican. I called and asked him if this were true, he refused to answer, but started laughing. I believe it was the mayoral race in Miami.

I cannot find any of the threads I wrote prior to 2008. I have been here since 2001, and believe me there were a lot of angry threads about the election then.

So I have nothing in my hand to give you except suggestions as to how you might find some of the history yourself.

Sam

[grasswire]

10. Also, did you notice Karen Hughes...

....talking about how Jebbie was fiddling on the computer after the news came in that Florida was being returned to undecided? At that time, the Bush family said they didn't believe that could be true.

We STILL don't know the depth of the perfidy, do we?

[StevieM]

12. Bush had a lot of different strategies to steal the election. At one point the Florida legislature

voted to award the state's electoral votes to George Bush.

One way or another, the Bush campaign was going to steal the election. And they did.

[Uncle Joe]

15. That's precisely why the Republican dominated U.S. Supreme Court stopped the votes from being

counted.

They knew that if Gore came out on top when the votes statewide were counted as the Florida Supreme Court ordered, the Florida Republican dominated legislature would've sent their own slate of electors and the Republican controlled Congress would've recognized them over the will of the people.

This would've been political disaster for the Republican Party ensuring major backlash in 2002 and probably 2004, the Republican felonious five in the Supreme Court didn't want this to happen so they acted to shield the Republicans in Florida and the Congress from having to take such drastic, undemocratic and no doubt highly unpopular actions.

[Art_from_Ark]

20. Cheney's duck-hunting buddy on the USSC

helped both to shield Florida Republicans and further the career of his duck-hunting buddy.

[kelliekat44]

14. Not to mention the disparities between the exit polling and the results in many areas. nt

[Arugula Latte]

16. Just think, she made possible the mass slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

"Oopsie."

Fuck you very much, Sandy.