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OrlandoMary
04-25-2005, 12:02 AM
An important refresher for ALL Americans

excerpts

St. Petersburg Times Online: Business

When five voted for millions
By ROBYN E. BLUMNER, Times Perspective Columnist
Published September 26, 2004

One of the darkest hours in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court was Dec. 12, 2000, at 10 p.m., when the five-member conservative majority handed the presidency to George W. Bush over his rival Al Gore.

Despite Florida's 61,000 statewide undervotes - possible legal votes that had not been counted by the machines - the high court claimed it was acting in the name of fairness to the state's voters when it overturned a decision by the Florida Supreme Court and stopped the recount.

At the time, there were still six days before the state's electors were scheduled meet and fully 25 days before Congress was to count the electoral votes. Yet the high court claimed there was no more time, effectively anointing Bush the winner in Florida by 537 votes.

Blatant partisanship was what made Bush vs. Gore such a blow to the integrity of the Supreme Court. In any number of ways the justices in the majority contorted the law and normative court procedure to reach the result they wanted...

...Justice John Paul Stevens bemoaned this legal legerdemain in his dissent: "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."

Stevens knew what went on behind the scenes and just how politicized and results-oriented the case's consideration had been. Now, thanks to a masterpiece of reporting in October's Vanity Fair, we know too. Reporter David Margolick headed a writing team that spoke with a number of former Supreme Court clerks who were there when the Bush case came before the court. Though most of Margolick's sources were former clerks for the liberal justices, some were from the conservative side as well.

While the clerks had pledged to keep the details of their tenure confidential, Margolick wrote that the clerks felt they were witnesses to an abuse of power and didn't feel obliged to shield those actions...

...Then, on Dec. 8, 2000, the Florida Supreme Court surprised everyone by addressing the high court's concerns and ordering a statewide recount of the undervotes. The Bush legal team ran back to the Supremes asking for a stay to stop the recount. (At one point Bush's lead had withered to 154 votes.)

Margolick reports that Justice Antonin Scalia was so anxious to shut the recount down that he pressured his colleagues to do so even before the Gore legal team had a chance to respond. That didn't happen, but consideration of the matter was moved up to the next morning. On the 9th, a stay was issued.

According to Margolick, the court's more conservative members, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Justices Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy, quickly started "sending around memos to their colleagues, each of them offering a different rationale for ruling in Bush's favor." They were "auditioning arguments," Margolick wrote. During the first go-round, Margolick reports, an O'Connor clerk told fellow clerks that "O'Connor was determined to overturn the Florida decision and was merely looking for grounds."

This was a court unhinged from the law, operating in a purely political guise, bereft of legitimacy.

Last week, before a friendly conservative audience, Scalia openly lamented the willingness of the Supreme Court to consider highly charged political questions on the death penalty and abortion, saying these issues should be left to the states. Funny, he didn't seem at all bothered that the court invaded state jurisdiction to choose a president.

Scalia's got a warped mirror. It is he who has damagingly politicized the court; and no doubt he would do it again if given the chance.

© Copyright 2003 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved [more]

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/09/26/news_pf/Columns/When_five_voted_for_m.shtml



VANITY FAIR
October 2004

THE PATH TO FLORIDA

As the Florida recount ate away at George W. Bush’s margin of victory (1,784 votes . . . 327 . . . 154 . . . ), the machinery of political power sprang to life. In Washington, stunned U.S. Supreme Court clerks watched justice become partisan, while in Florida, tens of thousands of citizens—thousands of them African-American—found themselves disenfranchised by misleading, faulty, and uncounted ballots, or inexplicably purged from the rolls.

DAVID MARGOLICK, EVGENIA PERETZ, and MICHAEL SHNAYERSON, Zeroing in on the frenzied 36 days that followed the 2000 election, investigate the “Brooks Brothers riot,” Jeb Bush’s high-tech felon hunt, and the new voting machines that leave no paper trail, and ask, Could it happen again?

……………

Shortly after the presidential vote in November 2000, two law clerks at the United States Supreme Court were joking about the photo finish in Florida. Wouldn’t it be funny, one mused, if the matter landed before them? And how, if it did, the Court would split five to four, as it so often did in big cases, with the conservative majority installing George W. Bush in the White House? The two just laughed. It all seemed too preposterous. [much, much more]

http://makethemaccountable.com/articles/The_Path_To_Florida.htm