This was promised to Smirk in 1992.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/politics/13SCOT.html
WA SHINGTON, Dec. 12 - The Supreme Court effectively
handed the presidential
election to George W. Bush tonight, overturning
the Florida Supreme Court and ruling by a
vote of 5 to 4 that there could be no further
counting of Florida's disputed presidential votes.
The ruling came after a long and tense day of
waiting at 10 p.m., just two hours before the
Dec. 12 "safe harbor" for immunizing a state's
electors from challenge in Congress was to
come to an end. The unsigned majority opinion
said it was the immediacy of this deadline
that made it impossible to come up with a way
of counting the votes that could both meet
"minimal constitutional standards" and be accomplished
within the deadline.
The five members of the majority were Chief Justice
William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra
Day O'Connor, (Thanks,
Sandy!) Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy
and Clarence Thomas.
Among the four dissenters, two justices, Stephen
G. Breyer and David H. Souter, agreed
with the majority that the varying standards
in different Florida counties for counting the
punch-card ballots presented problems of both
due process and equal protection. But
unlike the majority, these justices said the
answer should be not to shut the recount down,
but to extend it until the Dec. 18 date for the
meeting of the Electoral College.
Justice Souter said that such a recount would
be a "tall order" but that "there is no justification
for denying the state the opportunity to try
to count all the disputed ballots now."
Sure there is.
This was promised
to Smirk in 1992.
The six separate opinions, totaling 65 pages,
were filled with evidence that the justices
were acutely aware of the controversy the court
had entered by accepting Governor
Bush's appeal of last Friday's Florida Supreme
Court ruling and by granting him a stay of
the recount on Saturday afternoon, just hours
after the vote counting had begun.
"None are more conscious of the vital limits on
judicial authority than are the members of
this court," the majority opinion said, referring
to "our unsought responsibility to resolve the
federal and constitutional issues the judicial
system has been forced to confront."
Horseshit!
You guys want Smirk so bad, Scalia threatened
to resign if Gore won.
The dissenters said nearly all the objections
raised by Mr. Bush were insubstantial. The
court should not have reviewed either this
case or the one it decided last week, they said.
Justice John Paul Stevens said the court's action
"can only lend credence to the most
cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout
the land."
You bet your ass.
You guys have been the laughing stock if the
word for two years,
even since you joined Paula Jones in the Great
Clinton Cock Hunt.
His dissenting opinion, also signed by Justices
Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, added:
"It is confidence in the men and women who administer
the judicial system that is the true
backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day
heal the wound to that confidence that will
be inflicted by today's decision. One thing,
however, is certain. 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."
What the court's day and a half of deliberations
yielded tonight was a messy product that
bore the earmarks of a failed attempt at a compromise
solution that would have permitted
the vote counting to continue.
It appeared that Justices Souter and Breyer, by
taking seriously the equal protection
concerns that Justices Kennedy and O'Connor had
raised at the argument, had tried to
persuade them that those concerns could be addressed
in a remedy that would permit the
disputed votes to be counted.
Justices O'Connor and Kennedy were the only justices
whose names did not appear
separately on any opinion, indicating that one
or both of them wrote the court's unsigned
majority opinion, labelled only "per curiam,"
or "by the court." Its focus was narrow, limited
to the ballot counting process itself. The opinion
objected not only to the varying standards
used by different counties for determining voter
intent, but to aspects of the Florida
Supreme Court's order determining which ballots
should be counted.
"We are presented with a situation where a state
court with the power to assure uniformity
has ordered a statewide recount with minimal
procedural safeguards," the opinion said.
"When a court orders a statewide remedy, there
must be at least some assurance that the
rudimentary requirements of equal treatment and
fundamental fairness are satisfied."
Wait a minute - the initial balloting was flawed
- so you're saying that should stand
because the remedy MIGHT be flawed?
What happened to the will of the people?
Three members of the majority - the Chief Justice,
and Justices Scalia and Thomas -
raised further, more basic objections to the
recount and said the Florida Supreme Court
had violated state law in ordering it.
Big shocker there - the Chief Cock-Hunter and
the two with a financial stake in the case
decided Smirk must win at all costs. After
all, why hire two sons of a Supreme Court
Justice if daddy's going to rule against our
side?
The fact that Justices O'Connor and Kennedy evidently
did not share these deeper
concerns had offered a potential basis for a
coalition between them and the dissenters.
That effort apparently foundered on the two justices'
conviction that the midnight deadline
of Dec. 12 had to be met.
The majority said that "substantial additional work" was needed to undertake a constitutional recount,
Gee, I'll bet we could've had time if you decided this a week ago.
including not only uniform statewide standards for determining a legal vote,
But that was Katherine
Harris's job. Why should she do her job if
NOT doing it will
get her that ambassadorship, and if you guys
aren't going to call her on it?
This is a set-up and a scam, and there's nothing
we can do.
but also "practical procedures to implement them"
and "orderly judicial review of any
disputed matters that might arise." There was
no way all this could be done, the majority said.
...not in three hours, after you guys stonewalled
the voters for 35 days.
Did you notice how the Supreme Court dragged
their feet alllllllllllllllllll this time,
but the two times they acted quickly
was to save Smirk's unqualified ass?
The dissenters said the concern with Dec. 12 was
misplaced. Justices Souter and Breyer
offered to send the case back to the Florida
courts "with instructions to establish uniform
standards for reviewuating the several types
of ballots that have prompted differing
treatments," as Justice Souter described his
proposed remand order. He added: "unlike
the majority, I see no warrant for this court
to assume that Florida could not possibly
comply with this requirement before the date
set for the meeting of electors, Dec. 18."
Justices Stevens and Ginsburg said they did not
share the view that the lack of a uniform
vote-counting standard presented an equal protection
problem.
In addition to joining Justice Souter's dissenting
opinion, Justice Breyer wrote one of his
own, signed by the three other dissenters, in
which he recounted the history of the
deadlocked presidential election of 1876 and
of the partisan role that one Supreme Court
justice, Joseph P. Bradley, played in awarding
the presidency to Rutherford B. Hayes.
"This history may help to explain why I think
it not only legally wrong, but also most
unfortunate, for the Court simply to have
terminated the Florida recount," Justice Breyer said.
He said
The recount was
moving ahead in an "orderly fashion," Justice
Breyer said, when "this court improvidently
entered a stay."
He said: "As a result, we will never know
whether the recount could have been completed."
There was no need for the court to have involved
itself in the election dispute this time, he said,
adding: "Above all, in this highly politicized
matter, the appearance of a split decision runs the risk
of undermining the public's confidence in
the court itself. That confidence is a public treasure.
It has been built slowly over many years, some
of which were marked by a Civil War and the
tragedy of segregation. It is a vitally necessary
ingredient of any successful effort to protect
basic liberty and, indeed, the rule of law itself."
"We do risk a self-inflicted
wound," Justice Breyer said,
"a wound that may harm not just
the court, but the nation."
Justice Ginsburg also wrote a dissenting opinion,
joined by the other dissenters. Her
focus was on the implications for federalism
of the majority's action. "I might join the chief
justice were it my commission to interpret Florida
law," she said, adding: "The
extraordinary setting of this case has obscured
the ordinary principle that dictates its
proper resolution: federal courts defer to state
high courts' interpretations of their state's
own law. This principle reflects the core of
federalism, on which all agree."
"Were the other members of this
court as mindful as they generally are
of our system of dual sovereignty,"
Justice Ginsburg concluded,
"they would affirm the judgment
of the Florida Supreme Court."
Unlike the other dissenters,
who said they dissented "respectfully,"
Justice Ginsburg said only:
"I dissent."
Nothing about this case, Bush v. Gore, No. 00-949,
was ordinary: not its context, not its
acceptance over the weekend, not the enormously
accelerated schedule with argument on
Monday, and not the way the decision was released
to the public tonight.
Don't forget the multiple, obvious conflicts
of interests.
1. Smirk's brother calling the election
when he didn't have the votes.
2. Smirk's brother promising "to take
care of things."
3. Smirk's campaign manager certifying
too-early returns as "legitimate."
4. The Supreme Court volunteering to
jump in.
5. Slappy Thomas's wife working for
Bush.
6. Two of Scalia's sons working for
Bush.
7. Ted Olson, Major in the Cock HUnt
Army leading the charge.
8. Scalia promising to quit if "his
team" lost.
9. The press, willing to close their
eyes.
The press, refusing
to ask Smirk any tough questions.
The press, printing
every Austin fax about Gore's "lying problem" as if it were true.
Add to that Al Gore's refusal to fight, after
he PROMISED he would, again and again.
When the court issues an opinion, the justices
ordinarily take the bench and the justice
who has written for the majority gives a brief
oral description of the case and the holding.
Today, after darkness fell and their work was
done, the justices left the Supreme Court
building individually from the underground garage,
with no word to dozens of journalists
from around the world who were waiting in the
crowded pressroom for word as to when, or
whether, a decision might come. By the time the
pressroom staff passed out copies of the
decision, the justices were gone.
Are you trying to say these whores might have
a sense of shame?
I don't buy that for a second.
Even the dissenters stood by and watched it
happen, like a wife, doing nothing,
while her perverted husband rapes their twelve-year
old daughter every night.
...and Smirk's win guarantees he'll stock the
court, for decades to come,
with like-minded fascists who will put the
wishes of the people last.