<nettime> more on Bush's ascension. from The Nation

[david@2dk.net]

Well know lawyer states his case against supreme court

**************

February 5, 2001

None Dare Call It Treason
by Vincent Bugliosi

 In the December 12 ruling by the US Supreme Court handing the election to
George Bush, the Court committed the unpardonable sin of being a knowing
surrogate for the Republican Party instead of being an impartial arbiter of
the law. If you doubt this, try to imagine Al Gore's and George Bush's
roles being reversed and ask yourself if you can conceive of Justice
Antonin Scalia and his four conservative brethren issuing an emergency
order on December 9 stopping the counting of ballots (at a time when Gore's
lead had shrunk to 154 votes) on the grounds that if it continued, Gore
could suffer "irreparable harm," and then subsequently, on December 12,
bequeathing the election to Gore on equal protection grounds. If you can,
then I suppose you can also imagine seeing a man jumping away from his own
shadow, Frenchmen no longer drinking wine.

 From the beginning, Bush desperately sought, as it were, to prevent the
opening of the door, the looking into the box--unmistakable signs that he
feared the truth. In a nation that prides itself on openness, instead of
the Supreme Court doing everything within its power to find a legal way to
open the door and box, they did the precise opposite in grasping,
stretching and searching mightily for a way, any way at all, to aid their
choice for President, Bush, in the suppression of the truth, finally
settling, in their judicial coup d'etat, on the untenable argument that
there was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection
clause--the Court asserting that because of the various standards of
determining the voter's intent in the Florida counties, voters were treated
unequally, since a vote disqualified in one county (the so-called
undervotes, which the voting machines did not pick up) may have been
counted in another county, and vice versa. Accordingly, the Court reversed
the Florida Supreme Court's order that the undervotes be counted,
effectively delivering the presidency to Bush.

  Now, in the equal protection cases I've seen, the aggrieved party, the
one who is being harmed and discriminated against, almost invariably brings
the action. But no Florida voter I'm aware of brought any action under the
equal protection clause claiming he was disfranchised because of the
different standards being employed. What happened here is that Bush leaped
in and tried to profit from a hypothetical wrong inflicted on someone else.
Even assuming Bush had this right, the very core of his petition to the
Court was that he himself would be harmed by these different standards. But
would he have? If we're to be governed by common sense, the answer is no.
The reason is that just as with flipping a coin you end up in rather short
order with as many heads as tails, there would be a "wash" here for both
sides, i.e., there would be just as many Bush as Gore votes that would be
counted in one county yet disqualified in the next. (Even if we were to
assume, for the sake of argument,  that the wash wouldn't end up exactly,
100 percent even, we'd still be dealing with the rule of de minimis non
curat lex--the law does not concern itself with trifling matters.) So what
harm to Bush was the Court so passionately trying to prevent by its ruling
other than the real one: that he would be harmed by the truth as elicited
from a full counting of the undervotes?

  And if the Court's five-member majority was concerned not about Bush but
the voters themselves, as they fervently claimed to be, then under what
conceivable theory would they, in effect, tell these voters, "We're so
concerned that some of you undervoters may lose your vote under the
different Florida county standards that we're going to solve the problem by
making sure that none of you undervoters have your votes counted"? Isn't
this exactly what the Court did?

  Gore's lawyer, David Boies, never argued either of the above points to
the Court. Also, since Boies already knew (from language in the December 9
emergency order of the Court) that Justice Scalia, the Court's right-wing
ideologue; his Pavlovian puppet, Clarence Thomas, who doesn't even try to
create the impression that he's thinking; and three other conservatives on
the Court (William Rehnquist, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy)
intended to deodorize their foul intent by hanging their hat on the anemic
equal protection argument, wouldn't you think that he and his people would
have come up with at least three or four strong arguments to expose it for
what it was--a legal gimmick that the brazen, shameless majority intended
to invoke to perpetrate a judicial hijacking in broad daylight? And made
sure that he got into the record of his oral argument all of these points?
Yet, remarkably, Boies only managed to make one good equal protection
argument, and that one near the very end of his presentation, and then only
because Justice Rehnquist (not at Boies's request, I might add) granted him
an extra two minutes. If Rehnquist hadn't given him the additional two
minutes, Boies would have sat down without getting even one good equal
protection argument into the record.

  This was Boies's belated argument: "Any differences as to how this
standard [to determine voter intent] is interpreted have a lot less
significance in terms of what votes are counted or not counted than simply
the differences in machines that exist throughout the counties of Florida."
A more powerful way to make Boies's argument would have been to point out
to the Court the reductio ad absurdum of the equal protection argument. If
none of the undervotes were counted because of the various standards to
count them, then to be completely consistent the Court would have had no
choice but to invalidate the entire Florida election, since there is no
question that votes lost in some counties because of the method of voting
would have been recorded in others utilizing a different method.*1 How
would the conservative majority have gotten around that argument without
buckling on the counting of the undervotes? Of course, advice after a
mistake is like medicine after death. And as we shall see, no matter what
Boies argued, the five conservative Justices had already made up their
minds. But it would have been delightful to see how these Justices, forced
to stare into the noonday sun, would have attempted to avoid a
confrontation with the truth.

  The Court majority, after knowingly transforming the votes of 50 million
Americans into nothing and throwing out all of the Florida undervotes
(around 60,000), actually wrote that their ruling was intended to preserve
"the fundamental right" to vote. This elevates audacity to symphonic and
operatic levels. The Court went on to say, after stealing the election from
the American people, "None are more conscious of the vital limits on its
judicial authority than are the members of this Court, and none stand more
in admiration of the Constitution's design to leave the selection of the
President to the people." Can you imagine that? As they say, "It's enough
to drive you to drink."

  What makes the Court's decision even more offensive is that it warmly
embraced, of all the bitter ironies, the equal protection clause, a
constitutional provision tailor-made for blacks that these five
conservative Justices have shown no hospitality to when invoked in lawsuits
by black people, the very segment of the population most likely to be hurt
by a Bush administration. As University of Southern California law
professor Erwin Chemerinsky noted: "The Rehnquist Court almost never uses
equal protection jurisprudence except in striking down affirmative action
programs [designed to help blacks and minorities]. I can't think of a
single instance where Scalia or Thomas has found discrimination against a
racial minority, or women, or the aged, or the disabled, to be
unconstitutional."

  Varying methods to cast and count votes have been going on in every state
of the union for the past two centuries, and the Supreme Court has been as
silent as a church mouse on the matter, never even hinting that there might
be a right under the equal protection clause that was being violated.
Georgetown University law professor David Cole said, "[The Court] created a
new right out of whole cloth and made sure it ultimately protected only one
person--George Bush." The simple fact is that the five conservative
Justices did not have a judicial leg to stand on in their blatantly
partisan decision. In a feeble, desperate effort to support their decision,
the Court cited four of its previous cases as legal precedent, but not one
of them bears even the slightest resemblance to Bush v. Gore. In one (Gray
v. Sanders), the state of Georgia had a system where the vote of each
citizen counted for less and less as the population of his or her county
increased. In another (Moore v. Ogilvie), the residents of smaller counties
in Illinois were able to form a new party to elect candidates, something
residents of larger counties could not do. Another (Reynolds v. Sims) was
an apportionment case, and the fourth (Harper v. Virginia) involved the
payment of a poll tax as a qualification for voting. If a first-year law
student ever cited completely inapplicable authority like this, any
thoughtful professor would encourage him not to waste two more years trying
to become a lawyer. As Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar noted, the five
conservative Justices "failed to cite a single case that, on its facts,
comes close to supporting its analysis and result."*2

  If the Court majority had been truly concerned about the equal protection
of all voters, the real equal protection violation, of course, took place
when they cut off the counting of the undervotes. As indicated, that very
act denied the 50 million Americans who voted for Gore the right to have
their votes count at all. It misses the point to argue that the five
Justices stole the election only if it turns out that Gore overcame Bush's
lead in the undervote recount. We're talking about the moral and ethical
culpability of these Justices, and when you do that, the bell was rung at
the moment they engaged in their conduct. What happened thereafter cannot
unring the bell and is therefore irrelevant. To judge these Justices by the
final result rather than by their intentions at the time of their conduct
would be like exonerating one who shoots to kill if the bullet misses the
victim. With that type of extravagant reasoning, if the bullet goes on and
accidentally strikes down a third party who is about to kill another,
perhaps the gunman should ultimately be viewed as a hero.

  Other than the unprecedented and outrageous nature of what the Court did,
nothing surprises me more than how it is being viewed by the legal scholars
and pundits who have criticized the opinion. As far as I can determine,
most have correctly assailed the Court for issuing a ruling that was
clearly political. As the December 25 Time capsulized it, "A sizable number
of critics, from law professors to some of the Court's own members, have
attacked the ruling as...politically motivated." A sampling from a few law
professors: Vanderbilt professor Suzanna Sherry said, "There is really very
little way to reconcile this opinion other than that they wanted Bush to
win." Yale's Amar lamented that "for Supreme Court watchers this case will
be like BC and AD. For many of my colleagues, this was like the day
President Kennedy was assassinated. Many of us [had] thought that courts do
not act in an openly political fashion." Harvard law professor Randall
Kennedy called the decision "outrageous."

  The only problem I have with these critics is that they have merely lost
respect for and confidence in the Court. "I have less respect for the Court
than before," Amar wrote. The New York Times said the ruling appeared
"openly political" and that it "eroded public confidence in the Court."
Indeed, the always accommodating and obsequious (in all matters pertaining
to the High Court, in front of which he regularly appears) Harvard law
professor Laurence Tribe, who was Gore's chief appellate lawyer, went even
further in the weakness of his disenchantment with the Court. "Even if we
disagree" with the Court's ruling, he said, Americans should "rally around
the decision."

  Sometimes the body politic is lulled into thinking along unreasoned
lines. The "conventional wisdom" emerging immediately after the Court's
ruling seemed to be that the Court, by its political ruling, had only lost
a lot of credibility and altitude in the minds of many people. But these
critics of the ruling, even those who flat-out say the Court "stole" the
election, apparently have not stopped to realize the inappropriateness of
their tepid position vis-a-vis what the Court did. You mean you can steal a
presidential election and your only retribution is that some people don't
have as much respect for you, as much confidence in you? That's all? If,
indeed, the Court, as the critics say, made a politically motivated ruling
(which it unquestionably did), this is tantamount to saying, and can only
mean, that the Court did not base its ruling on the law. And if this is so
(which again, it unquestionably is), this means that these five Justices
deliberately and knowingly decided to nullify the votes of the 50 million
Americans who voted for Al Gore and to steal the election for Bush. Of
course, nothing could possibly be more serious in its enormous
ramifications. The stark reality, and I say this with every fiber of my
being, is that the institution Americans trust the most to protect its
freedoms and principles committed one of the biggest and most serious
crimes this nation has ever seen--pure and simple, the theft of the
presidency. And by definition, the perpetrators of this crime have to be
denominated criminals.

  Since the notion of five Supreme Court Justices being criminals is so
alien to our sensibilities and previously held beliefs, and since, for the
most part, people see and hear, as Thoreau said, what they expect to see
and hear, most readers will find my characterization of these Justices to
be intellectually incongruous. But make no mistake about it, I think my
background in the criminal law is sufficient to inform you that Scalia,
Thomas et al. are criminals in the very truest sense of the word.

  Essentially, there are two types of crimes: malum prohibitum (wrong
because they are prohibited) crimes, more popularly called "civil offenses"
or "quasi crimes," such as selling liquor after a specified time of day,
hunting during the off-season, gambling, etc.; and malum in se (wrong in
themselves) crimes. The latter, such as robbery, rape, murder and arson,
are the only true crimes. Without exception, they all involve morally
reprehensible conduct. Even if there were no law prohibiting such conduct,
one would know (as opposed to a malum prohibitum crime) it is wrong, often
evil. Although the victim of most true crimes is an individual (for
example, a person robbed or raped), such crimes are considered to be
"wrongs against society." This is why the plaintiff in all felony criminal
prosecutions is either the state (People of the State of California v.
_______) or the federal government (United States of America v. _______).

  No technical true crime was committed here by the five conservative
Justices only because no Congress ever dreamed of enacting a statute making
it a crime to steal a presidential election. It is so far-out and
unbelievable that there was no law, then, for these five Justices to have
violated by their theft of the election. But if what these Justices did was
not "morally reprehensible" and a "wrong against society," what would be?
In terms, then, of natural law and justice--the protoplasm of all eventual
laws on the books--these five Justices are criminals in every true sense of
the word, and in a fair and just world belong behind prison bars as much as
any American white-collar criminal who ever lived. Of course, the
right-wing extremists who have saluted the Court for its theft of the
election are the same type of people who feel it is perfectly all right to
have a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years in a federal penitentiary
for some poor black in the ghetto who is in possession of just fifty grams
of crack cocaine, even if he was not selling it.

  Though the five Justices clearly are criminals, no one is treating them
this way. As I say, even those who were outraged by the Court's ruling have
only lost respect for them. And for the most part the nation's press seems
to have already forgotten and/or forgiven. Within days, the Court's ruling
was no longer the subject of Op-Ed pieces. Indeed, just five days after its
high crime, the caption of an article by Jean Guccione in the Los Angeles
Times read, "The Supreme Court Should Weather This Storm." The following
day an AP story noted that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, on vacation in
Arizona, had fired a hole-in-one on the golf course.

  The lack of any valid legal basis for their decision and, most important,
the fact that it is inconceivable they would have ruled the way they did
for Gore, proves, on its face, that the five conservative Republican
Justices were up to no good. Therefore, not one stitch of circumstantial
evidence beyond this is really necessary to demonstrate their felonious
conduct and state of mind. (The fact that O'Connor, per the Wall Street
Journal, said before the election that she wanted to retire but did not
want to do so if a Democrat would be selecting her successor, that Thomas's
wife is working for the conservative Heritage Foundation to help handle the
Bush transition and that Scalia's two sons work for law firms representing
Bush is all unneeded trivia. We already know, without this, exactly what
happened.) But for those who want more, let me point out that there is no
surer way to find out what parties meant than to see what they have done.
And like typical criminals, the felonious five left their incriminating
fingerprints everywhere, showing an unmistakable consciousness of guilt on
their part.

  1. Under Florida statutory law, when the Florida Supreme Court finds that
a challenge to the certified result of an election is justified, it has the
power to "provide any relief appropriate under the circumstances" (§
102.168(8) of the Florida Election Code). On Friday, December 8, the
Florida court, so finding, ordered a manual recount (authorized under
§ 102.166(4)(c) of the Florida Election Code) of all disputed ballots
(around 60,000) throughout the entire state. As a New York Times editorial
reported, "The manual recount*3 was progressing smoothly and swiftly
Saturday...with new votes being recorded for both Vice President Al Gore
and Governor George W. Bush...serving the core democratic principle that
every legal vote should be counted" when, in midafternoon, the US Supreme
Court "did a disservice to the nation's tradition of fair elections by
calling a halt" to the recount. The stay (requested by Bush), the Times
said, appeared "highly political."*4

  Under Supreme Court rules, a stay is supposed to be granted to an
applicant (here, Bush) only if he makes a substantial showing that in the
absence of a stay, there is a likelihood of "irreparable harm" to him. With
the haste of a criminal, Justice Scalia, in trying to justify the Court's
shutting down of the vote counting, wrote, unbelievably, that counting
these votes would "threaten irreparable harm to petitioner [Bush]...by
casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election."
In other words, although the election had not yet been decided, the
absolutely incredible Scalia was presupposing that Bush had won the
election--indeed, had a right to win it--and any recount that showed Gore
got more votes in Florida than Bush could "cloud" Bush's presidency. Only a
criminal on the run, rushed for time and acting in desperation, could
possibly write the embarrassing words Scalia did, language showing that he
knew he had no legal basis for what he was doing, but that getting
something down in writing, even as intellectually flabby and fatuous as it
was, was better than nothing at all. (Rehnquist, Thomas, O'Connor and
Kennedy, naturally, joined Scalia in the stay order.)

  The New York Times observed that the Court gave the appearance by the
stay of "racing to beat the clock before an unwelcome truth would come
out." Terrance Sandalow, former dean of the University of Michigan Law
School and a judicial conservative who opposed Roe v. Wade and supported
the nomination to the Court of right-wing icon Robert Bork, said that "the
balance of harms so unmistakably were on the side of Gore" that the
granting of the stay was "incomprehensible," going on to call the stay "an
unmistakably partisan decision without any foundation in law."

  As Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in opposing the stay, Bush "failed to
carry the heavy burden" of showing a likelihood of irreparable harm if the
recount continued. In other words, the Court never even had the legal right
to grant the stay. "Counting every legally cast vote cannot constitute
irreparable harm," Stevens said. "On the other hand, there is a danger that
a stay may cause irreparable harm to the respondent [Gore] and, more
importantly, the public at large because of the risk that the entry of the
stay would be tantamount to a decision on the merits in favor of the
applicant. Preventing the recount from being completed will inevitably cast
a cloud on the legitimacy of the election." Stevens added what even the
felonious five knew but decided to ignore: that it is a "basic principle
inherent in our Constitution that every legal vote should be counted." From
the wrongful granting of the stay alone, the handwriting was on the wall.
Gore was about as safe as a cow in a Chicago stockyard.

  In yet another piece of incriminating circumstantial evidence, Scalia, in
granting Bush's application for the stay, wrote that "the issuance of the
stay suggests that a majority of the Court, while not deciding the issues
presented, believe that the petitioner [Bush] has a substantial probability
of success." But Antonin, why would you believe this when neither side had
submitted written briefs yet (they were due the following day, Sunday, by 4
pm), nor had there even been oral arguments (set for 11 am on Monday)? It
wouldn't be because you had already made up your mind on what you were
determined to do, come hell or high water, would it? Antonin, take it from
an experienced prosecutor--you're as guilty as sin. In my prosecutorial
days, I've had some worthy opponents. You wouldn't be one of them. Your
guilt is so obvious that if I thought more of you I'd feel constrained to
blush for you.

  2. When prosecutors present their circumstantial case against a
defendant, they put one speck of evidence upon another until ultimately
there is a strong mosaic of guilt. One such small speck is that in its
5-to-4 decision handing the election to Bush, the Court's ruling was set
forth in a thirteen-page "per curiam" (Latin for "by the court") opinion
(followed by concurring and dissenting opinions). Students of the Supreme
Court know that per curiam opinions are almost always issued for unanimous
(9-to-0) opinions in relatively unimportant and uncontroversial cases, or
where Justices wish to be very brief. But as USA Today pointed out,
"Neither was the case here." Again, on the run and in a guilty state of
mind, none of the five Justices, even the brazenly shameless Scalia, wanted
to sign their name to a majority opinion of the Court reversing the Florida
Supreme Court's order to recount the undervotes. A per curiam opinion,
which is always unsigned, was the answer. It is not even known who wrote
the per curiam opinion, though it is believed to be O'Connor and/or
Kennedy, neither of whose names is mentioned anywhere in the Court's
sixty-two-page document. After they did their dirty work by casting their
two votes on the case for their favorite--two votes that overruled and
rendered worthless the votes of 50 million Americans in fifty
states--O'Connor and Kennedy wanted to stay away from their decision the
way the devil stays away from holy water. Indeed, by their per curiam
opinion, it was almost as if the felonious five felt that since their names
would not be on the legally sacrilegious opinion, maybe, just maybe, the
guilt they knew they bore would be mitigated, at least somewhat, in
posterity.

  3. The proof that the Court itself knew its equal protection argument had
no merit whatsoever is that when Bush first asked the Court, on November
22, to consider three objections of his to the earlier, more limited
Florida recount then taking place, the Court only denied review on his
third objection--yeah, you guessed it, that the lack of a uniform standard
to determine the voter's intent violated the equal protection clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment. Since the Court, on November 22, felt that this
objection was so devoid of merit that it was unworthy of even being
considered by it, what did these learned Justices subsequently learn about
the equal protection clause they apparently did not know in November that
caused them just three weeks later, on December 12, to embrace and endorse
it so enthusiastically? The election was finally on the line on December 12
and they knew they had to come up with something, anything, to save the day
for their man.

  The bottom line is that nothing is more important in a democracy than the
right to vote. Without it there cannot be a democracy. And implicit in the
right to vote, obviously, is that the vote be counted. Yet with the
election hanging in the balance, the highest court in the land ordered that
the valid votes of thousands of Americans not be counted. That decision
gave the election to Bush. When Justice Thomas was asked by a skeptical
high school student the day after the Court's ruling whether the Court's
decision had anything to do with politics, he answered, "Zero." And when a
reporter thereafter asked Rehnquist whether he agreed with Thomas, he said,
"Absolutely, absolutely." Well, at least we know they can lie as well as
they can steal.

  4. The Court anchored its knowingly fraudulent decision on the equal
protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. But wait. Since the electors
in the fifty states weren't scheduled to meet and vote until December 18,
and the Court's ruling was on December 12, if the Court was really serious
about its decision that the various standards in the counties to determine
the voter's intent violated the equal protection clause, why not, as
Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer each noted in separate
dissents, simply remand the case back to the Florida Supreme Court with
instructions to establish a uniform, statewide standard and continue the
recount until December 18? The shameless and shameful felonious five had an
answer, which, in a sense, went to the heart of their decision even more
than the bogus equal protection argument. The unsigned and anonymously
written per curiam opinion noted that under Title 3 of the United States
Code, Section 5 (3 USC § 5), any controversy or contest to determine
the selection of electors should be resolved "six days prior to the meeting
of the Electoral College," that is, December 12, and inasmuch as the Court
issued its ruling at 10 pm on December 12, with just two hours remaining in
the day, the Court said, "That date [December 12] is upon us," and hence
there obviously was no time left to set uniform standards and continue the
recount. But there are a multiplicity of problems with the Court's
oh-so-convenient escape hatch. Writing in the Wall Street Journal,
University of Utah law professor Michael McConnell, a legal conservative,
pointed out that the December 12 "deadline" is only a deadline "for
receiving 'safe harbor' protection for the state's electors" (i.e., if a
state certifies its electors by that date, Congress can't question them),
not a federal deadline that must be met. New York University law professor
Larry Kramer observed that if a state does not make that deadline, "nothing
happens. The counting could continue."

  Justice Stevens observed in his dissent that 3 USC § 5 "merely
provides rules...for Congress to follow when selecting among conflicting
slates of electors. They do not prohibit a state from counting...legal
votes until a bonafide winner is determined. Indeed, in 1960, Hawaii
appointed two slates of electors and Congress chose to count the one
appointed on January 4, 1961, well after the Title 3 deadlines" of December
12 and 18. Thus, Stevens went on to say, even if an equal protection
violation is assumed for the sake of argument, "nothing prevents the
majority...from ordering relief appropriate to remedy that violation
without depriving Florida voters of their right to have their votes
counted."

  But even if December 12 were some kind of actual deadline, nothing was
sillier during this whole election debate than the talking heads on
television, many of whom were lawyers who should have known better,
treating the date as if it were sacrosanct and set in stone (exactly what
the Supreme Court majority, on the run and trying to defend their
indefensible position, said). In the real world, mandatory dates always
have an elliptical clause attached to them, "unless there is just cause for
extending the date." I cannot be accused of hyperbole when I say that
perhaps no less than thousands of times a day in courthouses throughout the
country, mandatory ("shall") dates to do this or that (file a brief, a
motion, commence a trial, etc.) are waived by the court on the
representation of one party alone that he needs more time. If extending the
December 12 (or the December 18 date, for that matter)*5 deadline for a few
days for the counting of votes to determine who the rightful winner of a
presidential election is does not constitute a sufficient cause for a short
extension of time, then what in the world does? No one has said it better
than columnist Thomas Friedman: "The five conservative Justices essentially
ruled that the sanctity of dates, even meaningless ones, mattered more than
the sanctity of votes, even meaningful ones. The Rehnquist Court now has
its legacy: In calendars we trust." In other words, to Scalia and his
friends, speed was more important than justice. More important than
accuracy. Being the strong-armed enforcer of deadlines, even
inconsequential ones, was more important to these five Justices than being
the nation's protector and guardian of the right to vote.

  What could be more infuriating than Chief Justice Rehnquist, who knew he
was setting up a straw man as counterfeit as the decision he supported,
writing that the recount "could not possibly be completed" in the two hours
remaining on December 12? The Supreme Court improperly stops the recounting
of the votes from Saturday afternoon to Tuesday, December 12, at 10 pm,
then has the barefaced audacity to say that Gore ran out of time? This type
of maddening sophistry is enough, as the expression goes, to piss off a
saint. How dare these five pompous asses do what they did?

  It should be noted that the recount that commenced on Saturday morning,
December 9, was scheduled to conclude by 2 pm that Sunday, and the vote
counters were making excellent progress. For example, as reported in the
December 10 New York Times, for the 9,000 Miami-Dade County ballots being
counted, eight county court judges counting 1,000 ballots an hour, had, by
midday Saturday, "gone through more than a third of the ballots [when
Scalia stepped in], and expected to finish by nightfall." So the Court's
extending the deadline to December 18 would have provided ample time for
the Florida Supreme Court to promulgate a uniform standard, finish the
vote-counting in a day or so, and even allow for judicial review. As
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg observed concerning this last point, "Notably,
the Florida Supreme Court has produced two substantial decisions within
twenty-nine hours of oral argument." Justice Breyer wrote that the alleged
equal protection "deficiency...could easily be remedied." But that's
assuming the felonious five wanted a remedy. They did not. All of the above
are further indicia of their guilty state of mind.

  5. If there are two sacred canons of the right-wing in America and
ultraconservative Justices like Scalia, Thomas and Rehnquist, it's their
ardent federalism, i.e., promotion of states' rights (Rehnquist, in fact,
wrote in his concurring opinion about wanting, wherever possible, to "defer
to the decisions of state courts on issues of state law"), and their
antipathy for Warren Court activist judges. So if it weren't for their
decision to find a way, any way imaginable, to appoint Bush President,
their automatic predilection would have been to stay the hell out of
Florida's business. The fact that they completely departed from what they
would almost reflexively do in ninety-nine out of a hundred other cases is
again persuasive circumstantial evidence of their criminal state of mind.

  6. Perhaps nothing Scalia et al. did revealed their consciousness of
guilt more than the total lack of legal stature they reposed in their
decision. Appellate court decisions, particularly those of the highest
court in the land, all enunciate and stand for legal principles. Not just
litigants but the courts themselves cite prior holdings as support for a
legal proposition they are espousing. But the Court knew that its ruling
(that differing standards for counting votes violate the equal protection
clause) could not possibly be a constitutional principle cited in the
future by themselves, other courts or litigants. Since different methods of
counting votes exist throughout the fifty states (e.g., Texas counts
dimpled chads, California does not), forty-four out of the fifty states do
not have uniform voting methods, and voting equipment and mechanisms in all
states necessarily vary in design, upkeep and performance. To apply the
equal protection ruling of Bush v. Gore would necessarily invalidate
virtually all elections throughout the country.

  This, obviously, was an extremely serious problem for the felonious five
to deal with. What to do? Not to worry. Are you ready for this one? By that
I mean, are you sitting down, since if you're standing, this is the type of
thing that could affect your physical equilibrium. Unbelievably, the Court
wrote that its ruling was " limited to the present circumstances, for the
problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many
complexities." (That's pure, unadulterated moonshine. The ruling sets forth
a very simple, noncomplex proposition--that if there are varying standards
to count votes, this violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment.) In other words, the Court, in effect, was saying its ruling
"only applied to those future cases captioned Bush v. Gore. In all other
equal protection voting cases, litigants should refer to prior decisions of
this court." Of the thousands of potential equal protection voting cases,
the Court was only interested in, and eager to grant relief to, one person
and one person only, George W. Bush.*6 Is there any limit to the effrontery
and shamelessness of these five right-wing Justices? Answer: No. This point
number six here, all alone and by itself, clearly and unequivocally shows
that the Court knew its decision was not based on the merits or the law,
and was solely a decision to appoint George Bush President.

  Conservatives, the very ones who wanted to impeach Earl Warren, have now
predictably taken to arguing that one shouldn't attack the Supreme Court as
I am because it can only harm the image of the Court, which we have to
respect as the national repository for, and protector of, the rule of law,
the latter being a sine qua non to a structured, nonanarchistic society.
This is just so much drivel. Under what convoluted theory do we honor the
rule of law by ignoring the violation of it (here, the sacred, inalienable
right to vote of all Americans) by the Supreme Court? With this
unquestioning subservience-to-authority theory, I suppose the laws of the
Third Reich--such as requiring Jews to wear a yellow Star of David on their
clothing--should have been respected and followed by the Jews. Blacks
should have respected Jim Crow laws in the first half of the twentieth
century. Naturally, these conservative exponents of not harming the Supreme
Court, even though the Court stole a federal election disfranchising 50
million American citizens, are the same people who felt no similar
hesitancy savaging the President of the United States not just day after
day, but week after week, month after month, yes, even year after year for
having a private and consensual sexual affair and then lying about it. And
this was so even though the vitriolic and never-ending attacks crippled the
executive branch of government for months on end, causing incalculable
damage to the office of the presidency and to this nation, both internally
and in the eyes of the world. Indeed, many of them are delighted to hound
and go after the President even after he leaves office.

  These five Justices, by their conduct, have forfeited the right to be
respected, and only by treating them the way they deserve to be treated can
we demonstrate our respect for the rule of law they defiled, and insure
that their successors will not engage in similarly criminal conduct.

  Why, one may ask, have I written this article? I'll tell you why. I'd
like to think, like most people, that I have a sense of justice. In my
mind's eye, these five Justices have gotten away with murder, and I want to
do whatever I can to make sure that they pay dearly for their crime. Though
they can't be prosecuted, I want them to know that there's at least one
American out there (and hopefully many more because of this article) who
knows (not thinks, but knows) precisely who they are. I want these five
Justices to know that because of this article, which I intend to send to
each one of them by registered mail, there's the exponential possibility
that when many Americans look at them in the future, they'll be saying,
"Why are these people in robes seated above me? They all belong behind
bars." I want these five Justices to know that this is America, not a
banana republic, and in the United States of America, you simply cannot get
away with things like this.

  At a minimum, I believe that the Court's inexcusable ruling will severely
stain its reputation for years to come, perhaps decades. This is very
unfortunate. As Justice Stevens wrote 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 [this Court] as an impartial guardian of
the rule of law." Considering the criminal intention behind the decision,
legal scholars and historians should place this ruling above the Dred Scott
case (Scott v. Sandford) and Plessy v. Ferguson in egregious sins of the
Court. The right of every American citizen to have his or her vote counted,
and for Americans (not five unelected Justices) to choose their President
was callously and I say criminally jettisoned by the Court's majority to
further its own political ideology. If there is such a thing as a judicial
hell, these five Justices won't have to worry about heating bills in their
future. Scalia and Thomas in particular are not only a disgrace to the
judiciary but to the legal profession, for years being nothing more than
transparent shills for the right wing of the Republican Party. If the
softest pillow is a clear conscience, these five Justices are in for some
hard nights. But if they aren't troubled by what they did, then we're
dealing with judicial sociopaths, people even more frightening than they
already appear to be.

  The Republican Party had a good candidate for President, John McCain.
Instead, it nominated perhaps the most unqualified person ever to become
President, and with the muscular, thuggish help of the Court, forced Bush
down the throats of more than half the nation's voters. As Linda Greenhouse
wrote in the New York Times, when Rehnquist administers the presidential
oath of office to Bush on January 20, for the first time in our nation's
history the Chief Justice will not just be a prop in the majestic ceremony
but a player. Rehnquist will be swearing in someone he made sure would be
President. Obscenity has its place in a free and open society, but it's in
the seedy, neon-light part of town, not on the steps of the nation's
Capitol being viewed by millions of Americans on television screens
throughout the land.

  That an election for an American President can be stolen by the highest
court in the land under the deliberate pretext of an inapplicable
constitutional provision has got to be one of the most frightening and
dangerous events ever to have occurred in this country. Until this
act--which is treasonous, though again not technically, in its sweeping
implications--is somehow rectified (and I do not know how this can be
done), can we be serene about continuing to place the adjective "great"
before the name of this country?

  FOOTNOTES

  *1. A total of 3,718,305 votes were cast in the Florida election under
the Votomatic punch-card system, and 2,353,811 votes were cast under the
optical-scan system. The percentage of votes not picked up using the
punch-card system was 3.92 percent, the rate under the more modern
optical-scan system being only 1.43 percent. Put in other terms, for every
10,000 votes cast, the punch-card system resulted in 250 more nonvotes than
the optical-scan system. Siegel v. LePore, No. 00-15981. See also Ford
Fessenden, "No-Vote Rates Higher in Punch-Card Counts," New York Times,
December 1.

  *2. The ruling was so bad that it was very difficult to find even
conservative legal scholars who supported it, and when the few who
attempted to do so stepped up to the plate, their observations were simply
pathetic. University of California, Berkeley, law professor John Yoo, a
former law clerk for Thomas, wrote that "we should balance the short-term
hit to the court's legitimacy with whether...it was in the best interest of
the country to end the electoral crisis." Translation: If an election is
close, it's better for the Supreme Court to pick the President, whether or
not he won the election, than to have the dispute resolved in the manner
prescribed by law. Pepperdine Law School's Douglas Kmiec unbelievably wrote
that "the ruling of the US Supreme Court was not along partisan or
ideological lines," and that its ruling "protected our cherished democratic
tradition with a soundly reasoned, per curiam voice of restraint." I won't
dignify this with a translation.

  *3. Actually, not a recount since the Votomatic machines, for whatever
reason, never did detect the votes on these particular ballots. The manual
count would be examining these ballots for the first time to see if, as
provided for under § 101.5614(5) of the Florida Election Code, there
was a "clear indication of the intent of the voter." One example: The
stylus punches a clear hole in the paper ballot, but the chad is still
attached (hanging) by one or more of its four sides. In that situation the
Votomatic machine frequently does not detect the vote, though the intent of
the voter could not be any clearer.

  *4. Earlier in the day, the conservative-leaning US Court of Appeals for
the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta voted 8 to 4 to deny Bush's companion
attempt to have that court stop the recount.

  *5. In fact, L. Kinvin Wroth, dean of the Vermont Law School and an
expert on the Electoral College, said that "a recount could have gone on
right up to the last day of Congress' joint session" on January 6, when the
votes of the College were counted in Congress.

  *6. And this, mind you, in an election in which Bush was leading in
Florida by only a few hundred votes while losing the popular vote
nationwide to Gore by, at last count, 539,000 votes.

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