From the centrist msnbc.com:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/501078.asp
About the day democracy was defeated.

1. Is it a coincidence that the only state in which this election crisis happened is the one governed by Bush's brother?
2. Is it a coincidence that the exit polls called the election correctly everywhere in the country - except for Florida?
3. Is it a coincidence that shortly after Florida was called for Gore, Bush made an urgent call to his brother the governor, and shortly thereafter the call for Gore was recalled by all networks?
4. Is it a coincidence that soon thereafter the election was incorrectly called for Bush by his own cousin at Fox (creating the lasting myth that Bush won)?
5. Is it a coincidence that all pre-election polls had Gore leading in Florida the night of Nov. 6 -- a lead that mysteriously evaporated by next day?
6. Is it a coincidence that the votes lost by Gore in various "irregularities" in Florida could well account for just that missing lead?
7. Is it a coincidence that pre-election polls (e.g. Zogby/Reuters) correctly called all states except for … Florida?
8. Is it a coincidence that conservative counties used high-accuracy Optical Scan systems while heavily Democratic counties used antiquated punch-cards?
9. Is it a coincidence that the Miami-Dade Canvassing Board decided to abruptly stop the hand count after mobs of Republicans paid for by Bush and other GOP campaigns stormed their building?
10. Is it a coincidence that prior to certifying the election, the Florida Secretary of State chose to toss out hand-counts in Democratic counties (Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Nassau) but accepted 418 hand-counted votes for Bush from heavily Republican counties (Franklin, Hamilton, Taylor, Washington, Lafayette and Seminole)?
11. Is it a coincidence that the aforementioned Secretary of State is a Bush family friend, delegate, and campaign activist?
12. Is it a coincidence that with her deciding which votes count and which do not, Bush managed to hold onto just enough of a lead for her to certify the election?
13. Is it a coincidence that the official willing to sign legislation to appoint a Republican slate of electors and overrule the will of the people is … Bush's brother?
14. Is it a coincidence that prior to the election -- when Bush was leading in the polls -- the national "liberal" media was awash in stories of a possible popular-electoral vote split, but largely ignored this historic occurrence after Gore, not Bush, won the popular vote?
15. And is it a coincidence that the anointed Republican standard-bearer, a candidate not fit to be dog catcher, just happens to be the son of a former President and head of the CIA?

Ever see the the strange number of "coincidences" that link the murders of Lincoln and Kennedy? The above poster must honestly believe there is some sinister or supernatural connection with those two assasinations. After all, coincidence is hard evidence right?

As a conservative, you really **** me off with #8. You want to criticize for "high-accuracy Optical Scan systems"?? Florida counties made their choices for how to conduct an election. Ignorance of how to cast a ballot is a thin excuse.

You people must have a screw loose. Your vote counts if you are smart enough to cast it properly. That is why they send out instructions to each registered voter before the election and have clear instructions inside the booth. Voting is a right and an obligation - part of that is caring enough to spend a couple of minutes learning how to do it right! And don't give me any of that stuff about the machinery - that is the same bull that people used to say about computers before everybody figured out that garbage in - garbage out.

I live in one of those so-called conservative counties (Bay) that used the optical scanner. Please note that our Supervisor of Elections,Melanie Williams Boyd, Democrat, chose the optical scanner. Before Ms. William Boyd was elected to office in 1994, another Democrat held that office. The late Gladys Chapman was the Supervisor of Elections in Bay County for many years. Her son, Joe Chapman, is a prominent banker/lawyer/Democratic fundraiser. You ffail to have a basic understanding of the facts. Most of the Supervisor of Elections in the counties where the votes were so heavily disputed are Democrats.
I guess it was ok for JFK to have Robert Kennedy as the Attorney General, and for all the other Kennedy clan to dominate politics in the northeast for years.

I learned something else from Florida's election mess. I learned that judges don't always get it right, even when the stakes are really high.

We have Judge Sauls, who issued an opinion in the contest case that was really just dreadful by any measure. I read it, and I think half the lawyers I know could have done a better job of throwing the election to Bush, if that was Sauls' goal. His prompt recusal after being reversed was quite telling.

Then we have the Florida Supreme Court, where six members felt Sauls got the law wrong, but two felt it best to just throw up their hands and do nothing to correct it.

Then, and most pitiful of all, comes the U.S. Supreme Court. This is the court with the job of rising above partisanship, of protecting the citizens from incompetent or evil government. Without the Supreme Court, we might still have things like state-sanctioned segregation, for cryin' out loud. And the conservatives on the court stop the count either (1) to proclaim the lofty principal embedded deep in the Constitution that "enough is enough"; (2) to pronounce a state supreme court's interpretation of its own laws as wrong; (3) to protect Bush and the citizens from finding out that maybe, just maybe, Bush didn't really win; or (4) to find in the Constitution a newfangled right to have all votes counted the same way.

Makes me wonder how we can trust judges with things like death penalty appeals if they are having so much trouble with these election cases.

Now that we (the NRA) control the White House, I wanted to pass on our official song for all to enjoy:


THE NRA SONG
Guns are neat, Guns are sweet
Guns the tool, that makes ya cool.
Guns are fine, Guns are mine
Guns are things, that Jesus brings.
Guns for loonies, Guns for cons
Guns for Moonies, Guns for moms.
Guns are fun for everyone, buy them up by the ton.
Guns for me, Guns for you, Guns for nuts and children too!
Guns at home, Guns at work, Guns at play, Guns berserk!
Tons and tons of great big Guns
Are tons and tons of great big fun!
I've got Guns up my nose tween my ears and by my toes.
I'm no fool I'm so cool I take Guns to my school.
I take Guns in my car, to the store and to the bar.
I got Guns in a drawer in my pocket and on the floor.
I got Guns on the wall, in my bed and in the hall.
Get a Gun and get it fast, shoot someone, it's a blast!

What about the 'coincidence' that Sandra O'Connor, the swing judge in the 5-4 Supreme Court Coup, had complained bitterly to a number of people on election eve that if Gore ended up winning she couldn't retire as planned since she wouldn't allow a Democratic President appoint her successor. What a travesty that she didn't recuse herself.

It's been shameful.
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0051/barrett.shtml
The Orlando Sentinel, conducting an independent review of ballots in a Republican county, already found a net gain of 130 Gore votes where the name had been written in. Basically, the Supreme Court conservatives ran out the clock and did everything possible to ensure the Bush technical victory.

Tony, it may be worse than you describe. I believe the statement you refer to was said by Chief Justice Rhenquist. Scalia is the likely choice if Rhenquist retires. So both Rhenquist and Scalia allegedly were interested in seeing Bush elected.

If you are too stupid to cast a vote properly, your vote doesn't count. END OF STORY. You are guaranteed the OPPORTUNITY to vote. You have the RESPONSIBILITY to read the ballot properly and vote accordingly. Personal responsibility, however, is not a favorite among Democrats. They would rather point the finger and blame others for their stupidity.

This whole "recount" nonsense was a load of crap from the very beginning. The only way Gore could pick up votes was to count ILLEGITIMATE votes (dimpled chads, pregnant chads, etc). Like it or not, A DIMPLED CHAD is NOT a vote. Besides the fact that they changed the rules in the middle of the game. They only started counting the infamous dimpled chads when they realized Gore didn't pick up enough votes.

It's time for the Gorons to accept defeat graciously. Or, as I offered in another thread, I'd be willing to help you pack all your bags and ship you off with all the Limousine Liberals in Hollywood. Several of them promised they would leave the country if Bush won. I wonder if they will keep up their end of the bargain?

The following is worth reading, an op-ed by Tony Amsterdam:
From the Los Angeles Times
December 17, 2000

The Law Is Left Twisting Slowly in the Wind
By ANTHONY G. AMSTERDAM
OP-ED

In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court held, 5 to 4, that
evidence of race discrimination in Georgia's use of the death penalty
was not enough to invalidate a death sentence under the equal
protection clause of the federal Constitution. During the court's private
deliberations (as Justice Thurgood Marshall's papers have disclosed), Justice Antonin
Scalia admitted that the evidence did show Georgia death sentences were being
handed out on grounds of race, but Scalia urged the court to disregard
this violation of equal protection in order to allow the states to get on
promptly with the business of killing. The published opinion of the Supreme
Court engineered Scalia's proposed result in a less forthright way, using a
parade of rhetorical tricks to conceal the majority justices' aim of
expediting the execution of death sentences.

Now, in its ruling for George W. Bush, a majority of
the Supreme Court intones solemnly that: "A desire for speed is not a
general excuse for ignoring equal protection guarantees."

In 1983, a majority of the Supreme Court rejected a
claim by a condemned Florida inmate that the Florida courts had violated
his federal constitutional rights by flagrantly disregarding
clear, long-settled rules of Florida law in sentencing him to death. The U.S.
Supreme Court opinion, written by Justice William Rehnquist, declared that
the federal courts and the federal Constitution could have nothing to do
with the matter, because Florida law is whatever the Florida courts say it
is, and their interpretations of Florida law are unreviewable by
federal Supreme Court justices.

Now, in its ruling for Bush, a majority of the federal Supreme Court
suddenly discovers that it has the power to 2nd-guess Florida court
decisions of Florida law.

The important point to notice in the presidential
election case is not simply the Supreme Court's abandonment of any
pretense at behaving like a court of law. It is not even the sickening hypocrisy
and insincere constitutional posturing with which the court's
foray into president- making is dressed up. It is that the court finally has
revealed unmistakably what it does all the time and usually gets away with:
masking result-driven, political, unprincipled decisions in the guise of
obedience to rules of law which the justices feel completely free to twist and
retwist to suit their purposes.

To steal an election in this way is bad but is not the worst of it. To take
human life by decisions made in this way--as the court has done again and
again in the past 2 decades--is among the greatercrimes for which the court
can now be held accountable on the record it has made for history and
eternity.

Anthony G. Amsterdam Is the Co-author With Jerome
Bruner of "Minding the Law" (Harvard University Press, 2000), Which
Analyzes the U.S. Supreme Court's Rhetorical Practices

I love these posts, you sound like the whining loser that you are. Maybe Algore should have taken some more illegal campaign contributions, he could have used them to buy off more Fla Supreme Court Judges. Thank God for the SCOTUS. Justice is served.

Cindy, it was O'Connor, as reported in the New York Times this past week. I wouldn't be surprised if Rehnquist was in the same boat.

The people in Florida doing the whining and complaining about confusing ballots, under-votes etc., have no one to blame but themselves! Like many people in this country they demand the rights and privileges of citizenship without accepting the resposnsibilities that go along with them. A responsible citizen who goes to the polls should have examined a sample ballot found in the newspaper or will ask a precinct official if they can't read the ballot or need assistance. Those who vote without first understanding the ballot and how to cast their votes are not responsible voters and have no reason to whine and complain.

Second, the process is not perfect, nor will it ever be perfect because it was created by non-perfect human beings! The candidate who received the fewest votes as officially certified by the state of Florida should have graciously conceded instead of creating a long, confusing process which deeply divided this nation!

Third-The Florida Supreme Court should have known that its decision to permit vote counts in just some counties without laying down firm, uniform standards for all county election boards to follow would create a clear violation of the equal protection clause in the US Constitution. The US Supreme Court was forced to act on a case which should never have reached them had Florida acted in a responsible manner. What the US Supreme Court had to do was clean up Florida's mess.

Finally-In this the Holiday Season of peace and love, can't we all let it go and move on to loving each other, helping the poor and downtrodden and giving of ourselves?

To Liz and Enough: The Fla Secretary of State conveniently accepted 418 hand counted ballots in favor of Bush, while ensuring that democratic ballots would not be considered. In New Mexico, the Bush campaign fought hard for a manual recount in the hopes of tying down those electoral college votes should there have been defectors.

Had our highest institutions not been so brazenly manipulated, perhaps there would be more consensus and respect for the outcome. Too bad for Bush, too bad for the Republican party.

Thanks anyway for the lofty holiday wishes. Let's just hope that there's some of that in store. Many of us question the values of the President-Select. His record in Texas towards on behalf of the poor and the downtrodden was pathetic.

For those of you that haven't seen it, this one's really funny:

(BSN) Sermon Mount -- In a stunning development this morning, God invoked
the "one nation, under God" clause of the Pledge of Allegiance to overrule last night's Supreme Court decision that handed the White House to George Bush. "I'm not sure where the Supreme Court gets off," God said this morning on a rare Today Show appearance, "but I'm sure as hell not going to lie back and let Bush get away with this bullshit." "I've
watched analysts argue for weeks now that the exact vote count in Florida 'will never be known.' Well, I'm God and I DO know exactly who voted for whom. Let's cut to the chase: Gore won Florida by exactly 20,219 votes."

Shocking political analysts and pundits, God's unexpected verdict overrules the official Electoral College tally and awards Florida to Al Gore, giving him a 289-246 victory.

The Bush campaign is analyzing God's Word for possible grounds for appeal. "God's ruling is a classic over-reach," argued Bush campaign strategist Jim Baker. "Clearly, a divine intervention in a U.S.
Presidential Election is unprecedented, unjust, and goes against the constitution of the state of Florida."

"Jim Baker's a jackass," God responded. "He's got some surprises ahead of him, let me tell you. HOT ones, if you know what I mean." God, who provided the exact vote counts for every Florida precinct, explained that bad balloting machinery and voter confusion were no grounds to give the White House to "a friggin' idiot."

"Look, only 612 people in Palm Beach County voted for Buchanan. Get
real! The rest meant to vote for Gore. Don't believe me? I'll name them:
Anderson, Pete; Anderson, Sam, Jr.; Arthur, James; Barnhardt, Ron...," intoned the Father.

Our Lord then went on to note that he was displeased with George W. Bush's prideful ways and announced that he would officially smite him. In an act of wrath unlike any reported since the Book of Job, God has today taken all of Bush's goats and livestock, stripped him of his wealth and possessions, sold his family into slavery, forced the former presidential candidate into hard labor in a salt mine, and afflicted him with deep boils. Dick Cheney will reportedly receive leprosy.

Can you imagine if it was the other way round, and it was Bush who'd won the popular vote but lost the electoral college after a U.S. Supreme Court dominated by Democratic appointees had voted 5-4 to stop counting votes likely to assure a Republican victory in, let us say, Illinois? We think we can safely guarantee that the Republicans would not be taking the soft path of "coming together" and reconciliation. They would be screaming about stolen elections, constitutional illegitimacy, and pledging to resist the "coup" by any means necessary. By now we would have had the Republicans in both House and Senate vowing to boycott the Inauguration. Unlike the Democrats, Republicans take losing and winning seriously.

You can tell the Republicans know this is going to look bad in the history books. Why else have they floated the notion that it might be wise, in the interests of civic tranquillity, to put all of Florida's ballots under lock and key for all eternity? It seems that Christie Todd Whitman, the governor of New Jersey, first put the idea up on MSNBC, claiming that a recount of the sort promised by the Miami Herald would somehow delegitimize the Bush presidency. Then Jennifer Dunn, the right-wing Republican from Washington state, hammered the point home by announcing on "Capitol Hill Gang" that "Those ballots are going to be sealed right after the election."

You'll note that neither Whitman nor Dunn entertain any romantic notion that a recount of Florida's ballots would propel George W. Bush into an assured and unchallengeable majority. Florida would assuredly have reflected Gore's popular victory across the rest of the country, by a margin that has now risen to 540,435 votes.

After all the sonorous sermons about "closure" and "finality," it is slowly dawning on people that this really was an amazingly corrupt election. I've already met three people here in Northern California who are eager to travel to an "anti-inaugural" in Washington D.C. to coincide with the swearing in of the beneficiary of the stolen election. The phrase "Republican coup d'etat" is not overly dramatic. There's no need to labor the major episodes, from Secretary of State Harris' summary decisions to the final intervention by Bush's supporters on the Supreme Court, at least two of whom, Scalia and Thomas, should have recused themselves from the decision because of conflicts of interest involving members of their families working for the Bush campaign.

That William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor would be willing to cede their places in history for the chance to keep their historic places on the socioeconomic-political ladder shouldn't surprised people. Their majority decision, which none of them had the guts to sign, was simply the most recent battle in the war that is not about Republican vs. Democrat. Rather, it is a conflict that pits the men in power against those who would threaten their control and their vision of their worth.
Ever since the civil rights and women's movements of the 1960s, the white guys at the top, the ones C. Wright Mills called the Power Elite, have understood that their survival as rulers was in question. They have seen their political control being diminished by people of color. They have seen women rising into positions of power; Hillary Clinton symbolized the practical as well as the psycho-sexual threat they sensed. They have seen their absolute monarchy in industry, finance and the professions attacked by affirmative action and sexual-discrimination lawsuits. They have seen an amazing influx of immigrants-beige to black immigrants-and they comprehend that a little after the middle of this century whites will no longer be in the majority in America.
They are willing to wage war to keep their Old Boy network and its prerogatives. They are willing to fight dirty. The decision in Bush vs. Gore was a blow below the belt, but the five Supremes did what they had to do. (That one of the five was a woman and another an African-American should surprise no one. They have always been shrewd enough to let the occasional well-behaved Other into their chambers, if not their clubs.)

What about the military ballots the Gorons didn't want counted?? You DEMORATS make me sick with your twisting of the facts and truth!!