Sandra Day O'Connor Doubts Decision To Take Bush V. Gore

SCOTUS didn't follow the law - Didn't you read the article?  Your first clue should have been when SCOTUS said that their decision wasn't to set precedent for any future cases.  It was a one time deal.  We don't 'do' "one time deals" - The US legal system is based on the English common law system, which is based on court cases and precedent (this is in contrast to Napoleanic code law).  Nothing is law unless it's been vetted by the court.  

But not in this case.  

Elections don't belong to candidates; they belong to the People.  Gore shouldn't have had to call for a recount statewide, but everyone knows why he didn't, and it had nothing to do with "an unConstitutional recount of only a few districts".  There is no such thing, "unConstitutional recount of only a few districts".  By law, a candidate can call for any number of districts to be recounted, and the reason Gore didn't was because of what the Bush campaign was doing in the initial hours after it was clear that the election was too close to call.  As the possibilities for what was going to happen were listed by the news talking heads, Bush lieutenants were fanning out all over the air waves and SCREAMING down any statewide recount.  
That's how the entire campaign had gone - One Bush-Cheney bullying tactic after another.  Gore allowed himself to be manuveured and the American people lost as a result.  The Bush campaign's game plan was declare himself the winner with more votes, and then to stall and stonewall any recount of anything, and try to run out the clock.  It was the football paradigm.  

Gore's strategy was the baseball paradigm - To push for the counting of all legally cast ballots.  That IS the American way.  

There was more controversy about the 2004 elections, both on the national level and individual state elections (Washington, Ohio, New Mexico, etc.).  Everything from voter suppression and purging and impediments (and provisional ballot challenges) and election software manipulation to Bush's convenient terror alerts and Bin Laden sightings days before the election.  
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Sandra Day O'Connor Doubts Decision To Take Bush V. Gore

And what makes it all even worse; when you "look forward, not back".

When you refuse to impeach BushCheney because "Republica­ns will say it's just because they impeached Clinton".

When you refuse to prosecute neocons who lied to Congress so that they could attack Iraq because of oil and war profiteering.

When you don't uphold the laws of the land, when you don't drive discredite­d offenders out of the halls of power, they return to the public stage, only to raise the ante on the destructio­n they're willing to do to their opponents.

You can't go forward unless and until you've looked back, assessed and corrected what went wrong.

What has become crystal clear is that Obama and the DLC/Third Way/No Labels-Democr­ats have adopted the Republican­s' casual relationsh­ip with (and disrespect for) the rule of law.  Preserving the rule of law underpins how the US has been the most successful­, longest running democracy in world history.  

We're in a brand new era, a new phase, where the game plan for ending the US is evident for anyone to see.  And it begins and ends with the rule of law.  By refusing to investigat­e and prosecute Bush, by "looking forward, not back", Obama has broken the covenant that the American people have with their government­.

BushCo broke federal US laws; the rule of law applies to all Americans, elected officials, too. Elected officials especially­.

For a president of the UnitedStat­es not to equally apply the law to all people, presidents­, too, means that the grand experiment is over.  

Not prosecutin­g BushCo is destroying the country. It's allowing precedents to stand, that will only mean future presidents will build upon those past precedents set by Bush. From those precedents spring aberration -- Obama already has built upon Bush's claims of 'Unitary Ex­ecutive', asserting that a president has the right to kill American citizens with no due process, no oversight, and no legislativ­e or judicial review of that position. Obama's already imposed a policy of 'indefinit­e preventive detention'­, again, imprisonin­g anyone, anywhere, anytime, forever, if a president chooses, with NO DUE PROCESS, no oversight. 

How any Democrat defends that is beyond my understand­ing.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Sandra Day O'Connor Doubts Decision To Take Bush V. Gore

The United States works, or it did work, because of the covenant We The People make with our government:  We agree to live under the rule of law in a democratic republic (where other people make the laws under which we agree to abide) as long as we get to choose who those people are who will be making the laws, and that will be applied to everyone.

It is under those conditions that we consent to be governed.

When we no longer trust in the process, when we no longer trust that the selection process by which our elected representatives is fair and accurate, or that the laws don't apply equally to all, that all bets are off.  
No government can stand once that happens.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Sandra Day O'Connor Doubts Decision To Take Bush V. Gore

This also explains why the exit polling, which is usually very accurate, was "off" by a significant amount.

==============================

Let's explain what you mean by the exit polling being "off" so that nobody misunderstands:  The exit polls had Al Gore winning by a significant amount.  
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Sandra Day O'Connor Doubts Decision To Take Bush V. Gore

What Brooks Jackson wrote at FactCheck was his opinion.  Not fact.  

How you and the Bush-supporters try to defend his assuming the office of the presidency is very much like how Bush investigated 9/11: By setting up a commission with members who had to agree before being allowed onto the commission that there would only be one report that would include only that which they all could agree on and no dissenting report.

If you want to know what happened on 9/11, you don't assemble political partisans and limit the scope and area of their inquiry.  Yet that's exactly what happened.  And that's also what your assessment of the 2000 election is.  If you only count the ballots that were counted, you'll always get the result that Bush won, end of story.  But that wasn't the end of the story.  There were hundreds of thousands of perfectly legible, legal ballots that weren't counted and by which Gore won.  
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Dave Zirin, Writer, Suggests George W. Bush Should Be Tried For War Crimes (VIDEO)

Yes, I consider him to be a conservative.  I think he would consider himself conservative.  There are issues where conservatives and liberals find common ground, and it's those issues where Turley's positions are considered 'libertarian'.   I like Turley, always have, don't necessarily agree with him on all issues, but I don't necessarily agree with my own kind (liberals) on all issues either.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Sandra Day O'Connor Doubts Decision To Take Bush V. Gore

BOTH partys were declaring that something HAD to be done about Saddam and his wmds

============================

Both parties were NOT declaring that the US attack Iraq.  

It took George W. Bush lying to Congress, saying that Saddam Hussein had yellowcake, to get that AUMF vote.  And even that was done with a promise by Bush that he wouldn't do anything without first getting a broad coalition and UN support and consult again with Congress.

Whatever Saddam did to his own people, he did it with US knowledge, support and materials.  He was being kept in check by sanctions, no fly zones and UN inspections.  Even UN inspectors said that he did NOT have WMD, nor did they support an invasion.  It was Bush who pulled UN weapons inspectors out of Iraq on the eve of starting the war.  

Let's also remember that Bush's ultimatum about regime change in Iraq (who the heck was Bush to be issuing ultimatums about a sovereign country?) and giving Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave the country actually got the result Bush was claiming to want.  Saddam agreed to exile.  But that wasn't what Bush (and the Arab League) wanted (oil and war profiteering), and so he ignored it, and pretended it hadn't happened and went ahead with the war.  All of this was unbeknownst to and out of the oversight of Congress (it's important to also remember John Bolton ordering NSA intercepts on members of our government at that time).

We don't have to guess about what Gore would have done - He said he wouldn't support it.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Sandra Day O'Connor Doubts Decision To Take Bush V. Gore

Here's an "if" game for you Bro.....if Gore had won, we probably wouldn't have gotten Obama.....ever.  

I like that scenario better.

=========================

Obama has nothing to do with this.  

You mistake me for an Obama supporter; I'm not.  
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Sandra Day O'Connor Doubts Decision To Take Bush V. Gore

I see you've gotten yourself all tangled up in the "if, if, if" game.  Let it go, it's 2013 Bro.

===============================================

"If, if, if" isn't any game; "if all legal ballots were counted" is the law of the land.  

Citizens have little enough of a Constituti­onally-gua­ranteed role within this democratic republic as it is without the courts (or election thieves) usurping it.  We have the right to vote for the representatives who will make the laws by which we agree to be governed.  But we do not to have our ballots counted - The founders were nothing if not ironic).  Once every 2 years, that's it.   

That's the way that our system of government is set up, on common law.  We do have to go back and examine and expose the lies being told when that one right has been taken from us.  And this, this beating a dead horse, is the price you pay for letting it happen and then later, not admitting it.  Still.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Sandra Day O'Connor Doubts Decision To Take Bush V. Gore

That's not what the court case was about, was it?

================================

Yes, that's what it was about.  Bush went to court to stop the counting of lawful ballots.  
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Sandra Day O'Connor Doubts Decision To Take Bush V. Gore

You're welcome - I can post more links and will when I have to time to sort through them all.  There used to be many more, but over time the media that published them have taken them down.  

There aren't any links from "the other side" (supporting Bush's claim that he got more legal ballots) because it's not true, so all they can do is call us names and create havoc and confusion as a distraction.  
In the years since we've seen more evidence of how they steal elections (suppression efforts, registered voter purges, dirty tricks like phone banks directing voters to the wrong polls, electronic voting machine manipulation, inadequate ballots and machines) so it's not as big a surprise to many as it was in 2000.  

One piece of information that got absolutely no coverage was that the CIA was working on GOP absentee ballots in the weeks leading up to election day in Florida.  That was the most amazing revelation from the televised court hearings in the post-election days in Florida --  'CharlesKane' testified to altering absentee ballots in the Martin County's Registrar's office in the two week period prior to election day (it's against the law and should render the ballots null and void).  When Kane was sworn in, he had to identify himself and give his occupation and employer. Retired CIA.  The judge asked him why he was altering the absentee ballots, and he answered "I go where I'm told."  Verbatim quote.  I heard it with my own ears.  The judge didn't follow up.  There was next to no news coverage of this, and none by the networks.  

When you think of CIA's involvement in elections overseas, why wouldn't we also think they're monkeying in our elections?  
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Sandra Day O'Connor Doubts Decision To Take Bush V. Gore

Published on Thursday, November 15, 2001 in the Long Island, NY Newsday
Not That It Was Reported, but Gore Won

IN JOURNALISM, it's called "burying the lead": A story starts off with what everyone already knows, while the real news - the most surprising, significant or never-been-told-before information - gets pushed down where people are less likely to see it.

That's what happened to the findings of the media study of the uncounted votes from last year's Florida presidential vote. A consortium of news outlets - including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Tribune Co. (Newsday's parent company), The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press and CNN - spent nearly a year and $900,000 reexamining every disputed ballot.

The consortium determined that if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed the ongoing recount to go through, George W. Bush would still likely have ended up in the White House. That's because the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court - as well as the more limited recount asked for by Democratic candidate Al Gore - only involved so-called undervotes, ballots that when counted mechanically registered no choice for president.

Gore and the Florida Supreme Court ignored overvotes - votes where mechanical counting registered more than one vote - on the assumption that there would be no way to tell which of the multiple candidates the voter actually intended to pick.

But as the consortium found when it actually looked at the overvotes, one often could tell what the voter's intent was. Many of the overvotes involved, for example, a voter punching the hole next to a candidate's name, and then writing in the same candidate's name.

Since the intent of the voter is clear, these are clearly valid votes under Florida law. And Gore picked up enough of such votes that it almost didn't matter what standard you used when looking at undervotes - whether you counted every dimple or insisted on a fully punched chad, the consortium found that Gore ended up the winner of virtually any full reexamination of rejected ballots.

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1115-02.htm

http://www­.consortiu­mnews.com/­2007/11120­7a.html

http://www­.guardian.­co.uk/theg­uardian/20­06/jul/14/­guardianwe­ekly.guard­ianweekly1

http://arc­hive.democ­rats.com/v­iew.cfm?id­=5111
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Sandra Day O'Connor Doubts Decision To Take Bush V. Gore

Your USA Today link doesn't exist, and if you read the entire opinion piece by John Broder and Ford Fessenden at your NYT link, you'll see that you're wrong.  As I pointed out at the time, mainstream media gave everyone something by putting in their headlines that "Bush Won", but if you actually read the analysis you'd see that had all legally cast ballots been counted, Gore won.  And like the Brooks' Brothers riots in the post-election days in Florida, the shouting matches prevented the fact that it was a stolen election sink in.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Sandra Day O'Connor Doubts Decision To Take Bush V. Gore

NORC, out of the University of Chicago, conducted the study in 2001. They examined all of the undervote and overvote ballots in all 67 counties of Florida. They built a database containing each ballot and the counters' interpreta­tion of the chads (punch cards) and marks (optical scan and absentee).

Once the database was built, they ran nine scenarios as to which counties were counted according to which standard.  They multiplied these nine scenarios times two agreement criteria (majority vs. unanimous) for a total of eighteen possible results.

Of these eighteen possible ways the vote could have been recounted, Bush won seven and Gore won eleven.

Specifical­ly, Bush won if the recount that Gore requested would have been finished (four counties).  Gore won if you recounted the whole state.

The whole-stat­e recount is the most important scenario because it's the one that gets to the heart of the question: Who won if every legitimate voter's vote was counted?

See the NORC recount project here.

Even Rachel Maddow referenced it a couple of days ago on her show:

RACHEL MADDOW, HOST:  In the 2000s, there have been two amazing stories about voting in the great state of Florida.  One of those stories is very well known.  The other one is barely known at all but has just become really, really important.

The first one was in the year 2000 when this happened.  The nail-bitin­gly close race between Al Gore and George W. Bush resulted in the race being called and then uncalled.  And then a cacophonou­s, disorganiz­ed, politicize­d, intimidate­d counting process was ultimately called off in what was considered to be one of the most anomalous and partisan U.S. Supreme Court decisions of the modern era.  And so, George W. Bush became the president-­elect.

And then a bunch of newspapers from Florida and nationally decided to commission a study—they hired a company to count all the votes that had been cast in that election in Florida.  By then, it was more than a year after the fact, but the study showed that if you did count all the votes in Florida that year, Al Gore won.  Incidental­ly, but by then it was 11 months into George Bush‘s presidency­.

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Sandra Day O'Connor Doubts Decision To Take Bush V. Gore

Eric Alterman summarized it well:

"[T]he inescapabl­e fact is that Gore was the genuine choice of a plurality of Florida’s voters as well as America’s. As the Associated Press reported in its examinatio­n of the NORC report, “In the review of all the state’s disputed ballots, Gore edged ahead under all six scenarios for counting all undervotes and overvotes statewide.­”

Gore beat Bush by almost every conceivabl­e counting standard.

Gore won under a strict-cou­nting scenario and he won under a loose-coun­ting scenario. He won if you counted “hanging chads” and he won if you counted “dimpled chads.” He won if you counted a dimpled chad only in the presence of another dimpled chad on the same ballot—the so-called Palm Beach standard. He even won if you counted only a fully punched chad. He won if you counted partially filled oval on an optical scan and he won if you counted only a fully filled optical scan. He won if you fairly counted the absentee ballots. No matter what, if everyone who legally voted in Florida had had a chance to see their vote counted, then Al Gore not George W. Bush, was elected president.­" 

http://www­.thedailyb­east.com/b­logs-and-s­tories/201­0-12-04/bu­sh-v-gore-­decision-l­ooks-even-­more-disgr­aceful-10-­years-late­r/
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

This FAA Sequester Vote Doesn't Smell Right

I'm an old OLD liberal DEMOCRAT.  I've never voted for a Republican in my life, never will, and the way things are going I'll never be voting for another Democrat again.  

No offense, but Democratic supporters like you are no different than (and just as ignorant on the issues as) Bushies.  Obama's 'most ardent supporters' aren't following the day-to-day intricacies that have taken place over these past years in Washington (and Obama's participation) - It seems as if they go to HuffPo as they would the sports page (or as Republican supporters watch only Fox).  Those of us who read the legislation and follow the day-to-day details of sausage-making know that these two parties work together to deliver to the 1%, and their only real conflict is over who is to get the credit/blame (with both their corporate masters and their party's base).  

How does "extreme Republican partisanship" cause a Democratic president to offer Social Security and Medicare benefits' cuts?  

How does "extreme Republican partisanship" cause a Democratic president to offer across-the-board sequestration that cuts off cancer patients from treatment and kids from Headstart?  

How does "extreme Republican partisanship" get a Democratic president to sign off on easing sequestration pain on the upper and corporate classes without (again) lifting sequestration pain also on those most vulnerable (children, the poor and the infirm)?  

Obama's either the worst negotiator in the history of the world (in which case he can't be "the smartest/the most adult/the greatest") or he's a DINO (Democrat in name only), a skillful conniving Trojan Horse put into office having tricked voters like you who think he's a populist working on behalf of the 98%.  

NEWSFLASH for you - In Obama's own words, he's a Reagan Republican: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r-emodk73w
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Boston Bombing Suspect, Listed On Classified Government Watch List

There's no reason that the FBI can't or shouldn't be involved with economic meltdown.   We're talking about TRILLIONS have been stolen and the complete and permanent breakdown of the social class structure of this nation, the world in fact.  

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/01/lanny-breuer-task-force-leader-doesnt-bother-showing-up-for-mortgage-fraud-press-conference.html
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

U.S. Tortured Detainees And Top Officials Are Responsible: Report

When you "look forward, not back".

When you refuse to impeach BushCheney because "Republica­ns will say it's just because they impeached Clinton".

When you refuse to prosecute neocons who lied to Congress so that they could attack Iraq.

When you don't uphold the laws of the land, when you don't drive discredite­d offenders out of the halls of power, they return to the public stage, only to raise the ante on the destructio­n they're willing to do to their opponents.

You can't go forward unless and until you've looked back, assessed and corrected what went wrong.

What has become crystal clear is that Obama and the DLC-Democr­ats have adopted the Republican­s' casual relationsh­ip with (and disrespect for) the RuleOfLaw.  Preserving the rule of law underpins how the US has been the most successful­, longest running democracy in world history.  

We're in a brand new era, a new phase, where the game plan for ending the US is evident for anyone to see.  And it begins and ends with the RuleofLaw.  By refusing to investigat­e and prosecute Bush, by "looking forward, not back", Obama has broken the covenant that the American people have with their government­.

BushCo broke federal US laws; the RuleOfLaw applies to all Americans, elected officials, too. Elected officialsespecially­.

The UnitedStat­es works, or it did, because of a covenant WeThePeopl­e make with our government­. We agree to a democratic republic, where other people make the laws under which we agree to abide (and that'll be applied to everyone), as long as we get to choose who those people are who'll be making the laws.  It's under those conditions that we consent to be governed.

When we no longer trust in the process, when we no longer trust that the selection process by which our elected representa­tives is fair and accurate, or that the laws don't apply equally to all, then all bets are off.  And no government can stand once that happens.

For a president of the UnitedStat­es not to equally apply the law to all people, presidents­, too, means that the grand experiment is over.  

Not prosecutin­g BushCo is destroying the country. It's allowing precedents to stand, that'll only mean future presidents will build upon those past precedents set by Bush. From those precedents spring aberration -- Obama's already built upon Bush's claims of 'UnitaryEx­ecutive', asserting that presidents have the right to kill American citizens with no due process, no oversight, and no legislativ­e or judicial review. Obama's already imposed a policy of 'indefinit­e preventive detention'­, again, imprisonin­g anyone, anywhere, anytime, forever, if a president chooses, with NO DUE PROCESS, no oversight. 

How any Democrat defends that is beyond my understand­ing.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

U.S. Tortured Detainees And Top Officials Are Responsible: Report

The purpose of torture was not to get real or accurate information. It was to get false information.

Among the tasks it was used for (none about getting real intel, none for the "ticking time bomb"-scenario) was to set up a justification to attack Iraq. To link 9/11 and Iraq. To link Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda.

The tapes would have shown that, and that's why they were destroyed.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Background Checks Beat Apple Pie, Baseball, Kittens In Americans' Hearts: Poll

 http://blog.seattlepi.com/marijuana/2013/04/11/feds-scoop-up-medical-marijuana-patient-records-in-oregon-investigation/
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Sequestration Effects: Cuts Sting Communities Nationwide

No sane person would have actually used the sequester.  That was Obama's error, he overestimated GOP humanity

==========================

I think it's you who overestimates Obama's "humanity".  

How many terms would it take over Obama doing the same thing, selling out the poor and middle classes, before voters like you realize that it's exactly what Obama's intended?  You do realize, don't you, that it's Obama who has put cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits on the table?  

You can't have it both ways.  You can't have "Obama's the smartest", "The only adult in the room", "He's playing 11th dimensional chess" and still have him being duped by Republicans.   
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...

Bob Casey Backs Gay Marriage

When your "religious beliefs" (or these senators' that you're defending, their beliefs) dictate how others are to live, that's forcing others to live by your beliefs.

Religions have all kind of rules based on beliefs of their followers, like not eating pork or shellfish, yet in America where there is separation of church and state, we don't make those beliefs into law.  

Your religion tells you not to marry someone of your same sex.  So don't do it!   But what possible reason could you have for not extending the same right to others if not because you want the United States to reflect your beliefs while it ignores most other Americans' beliefs (support for gay marriage)?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Read more...