Constitutional Law
I’m Conservative, But Not Biased, Scalia Says … So Get Over Bush v. Gore
Posted Apr 24, 2008, 02:49 pm CDT
By Martha Neil
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is admittedly a conservative and a law-and-order guy.
But he's not biased, he tells 60 Minutes in an interview with Lesley Stahl that is to be broadcast on Sunday's television program. And he describes as "nonsense" lingering claims that he (and other justices) decided one of their most famous cases in recent memory, Bush v. Gore, on political rather than legal grounds.
The court voted 7-2 on the main issue in the case, whether Florida's ballot recount methods were constitutional, he notes, adding that those who object to the result should simply "Get over it. It’s so old by now."
Asked why he gets along so well with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose liberal views about cases before the court tend to differ significantly from his own, Scalia says the two can disagree without attacking one another personally.
"I attack ideas, I don’t attack people, and some very good people have some very bad ideas," he tells Stahl. "And if you can’t separate the two, you got to get another day job. You don’t want to be a judge, at least not a judge on a multi-member panel."
After you've watched 60 Minutes Sunday night, be sure to visit ABAJournal.com for an exclusive interview with the justice—chock-full of tips on how you can be a better advocate—and excerpts from his new book, Making Your Case, plus our podcast. It'll all be on our home page Sunday at 8 p.m ET.
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Comments
Posted by DG - 4 months, 4 days, 16 hours, 52 minutes ago
LOL. The justice who complains ceaselessly about willful judges wants *me* to get over the fact that *he* voted to install a president in the most obviously dishonest decision the Supreme Court ever issued. I’ll get over it when each hypocrite who voted to appoint Bush is impeached.
Posted by Jennings Cantrel - 4 months, 4 days, 16 hours, 33 minutes ago
When all of the votes were counted in Florida weeks later, Bush won by a few thousand votes. No authoritative source claims Bush did not win the popular vote. What is your objection?
Posted by Will - 4 months, 4 days, 16 hours, 14 minutes ago
The problem wasn’t in the votes that were counted, but rather in those that were not counted because they were “spoiled.” For whatever reason, the spoilage rate in certain predominantly black communities was extremely high (80%+), and overall, 53% of the nearly 180,000 votes not counted belonged to black voters. Now, this could all be coincidental, but to say that all the votes counted is ridiculous.
Posted by David - 4 months, 4 days, 16 hours, 5 minutes ago
the constitution is old too, should we just “get over” that as well???
Posted by deaddoornail - 4 months, 4 days, 16 hours, 1 minute ago
It is still an outrage. If Al Gore was president, our lives would be much different. 9-11 wouldn’t have occurred, the country’s social welfare programs would be blooming, and most importantly, our carbon foot print would be shrinking to that of a baby.
Posted by Horace - 4 months, 4 days, 15 hours, 54 minutes ago
DG’s contribution to this discussion is emblematic of the vile and unprincipled liberal democrats who live by slogans like “count every vote” rather than thought. As to whether all the votes were counted, it might be remembered of course that CBS and the other media called Florida for Gore before the polls had closed in the largely Republican western counties in the Florida panhandle. As to spoiled ballots, both parties endorsed use of the notorious “butterfly” ballots which, it may appear, functioned as an intelligence test and disqualified some voters who couldn’t figure it out.
Posted by chuck e cheese - 4 months, 4 days, 15 hours, 33 minutes ago
Wow deaddoor....your oversimplistic view of world and political affairs is scary. I suspect you are still in law school. If not, very scary.
Posted by JEM - 4 months, 4 days, 15 hours, 27 minutes ago
Bush v. Gore violated the very “constitutional principles” (such as “states’ rights") about which Scalia claims to care so much. It was thoroughly and inherently political to say Florida wasn’t in charge of its own election. So much so that the Bush 5 actually put a disclaimer in the case that this case shall apply to no others in the future. It didn’t take any hindsight at all to find the decision disgusting, Mike Hunt. Many millions have been disgusted with it since day one. Scalia and the Bush 5 on the court really showed their true colors with that decision, and time will only increase the disgust and contempt with which they are viewed for that 100% political decision. As to the votes themselves, there is absolutely no doubt that Gore won Florida in 2000, but Bush was selected by the Supreme Court. That is the very definition of a political decision.
Posted by EMS - 4 months, 4 days, 15 hours, 26 minutes ago
"Vile and unprincipled liberal democrats”? As opposed to the thoughtful and carefully budgeted last 7 1/2 republican years?
“Get over it”? Will he “get over” major decisions that he disagrees with? Not likely.
Posted by Tsatb - 4 months, 4 days, 15 hours, 26 minutes ago
Will, I thought the chads were white—how did they know those hanging chads were attempted votes by black voters!?
http://www.tonyskansascity.com/tonyskansascity/hangingchad.jpg
Posted by Retired Guy - 4 months, 4 days, 15 hours, 24 minutes ago
The problem with Bush v. Gore wasn’t that it was political, and that therefore we should just “get over it.” The problem was that a group of Justices who adhere to a very limited view of the Equal Protection clause normally (as when minorities disproportionately receive the death penalty or fail to receive promotions) suddenly found an EP violation in a state’s procedure for counting votes. This violated both logic and experience: the nation had a bitterly divided election less than a decade after the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, and nobody thought it appropriate to ignore the Constitution and allow the Supremes to settle it (Congress appointed a committee which included members of the judiciary, but no one doubted that it was Congress’s job, as the Constitution insists). In his strict constructionist mode, Justice Scalia knows better than to have done this extremely activist act, and that is the real problem of Bush v. Gore.
Posted by horace - 4 months, 4 days, 15 hours, 14 minutes ago
The plain fact of the matter is that Gore and his “colleagues” reasoned that there were two ways in which he could win the presidency given the mess in Florida: (i) have an honest recount that would tip the balance in his favor; or (ii) bollux things up so thoroughly that Florida would be unable to certify a result in time for its delegates to be included in the Electoral College vote. The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the recount method Gore preferred—limited to counties where he was thought to have an edge—was an unconstitutional deprivation of equal protection. On the remedy, the court split 5-4; Scalia’s reasoning was largely that the recount, to be constitutional, could not be completed in time, and thus Gore would achieve his second objective, an unfair disqualification of its entire delegation to the Electoral College.
The press’s later attempt to conduct its own recount was basically an effort to discredit the legitimacy of Bush’s actual voting majority. The press, 90% of which vote democrat, were solely disappointed when their recount showed that in fact Bush had won Florida. That, of course, doesn’t dissuade the died-in-the-wool loonies on the left from believing that Gore won.
Posted by mlaw - 4 months, 4 days, 15 hours, 7 minutes ago
Amen Retired guy. I was in law school in Tallahassee during this mess and experienced a lot of the melee first hand. The court’s decision based on Equal Protection was absurd and flew in the face of well-established precedent.
Posted by Dave Ashley - 4 months, 4 days, 14 hours, 26 minutes ago
Wasn’t the problem with Gore’s method that he only wanted to recount where he had lost? Wouldn’t this have resulted in not having everyone’s vote counted equally? Isn’t that CLEARLY an instance of deprivation of equal protection? As citizens of states, we don’t have a right to vote in elections, we just have a right to have our votes counted equally. Recounting some counties and not others is an absolute failure to count votes equally.
Posted by anonymous - 4 months, 4 days, 14 hours, 16 minutes ago
I can’t believe what a bunch of mental midgets you all are. Get over it! On every legal theory, on every casted ballot, Bush won! Move on!
Posted by Matt - 4 months, 4 days, 14 hours, 13 minutes ago
I don’t understand those who claim Bush “stole” the election when an after the fact recount showed that he would have won anyway. Second, Bush v. Gore was in a sense political because the Supreme Court had to act quickly, given that our nation was in a crisis. The decision was correct. The opinion would have been MUCH better reasoned had the justices been afforded more time to write it. These factors are what Scalia alludes to when he says, “Get Over It!”.
Posted by Dave - 4 months, 4 days, 13 hours, 28 minutes ago
Of course gore requested recounts of the precincts where he thought the first tally was likely to be wrong. The problem with your argument is that ignores the fact that Florida had a specific procedure to follow if you wanted to request a recount. The request had to be made regarding a specific voting area, not the whole state, and it had to be made within a specific period of time. Gore followed the procedure and made the requests as he thought best, in compliance with the law. Bush elected not to file ANY such challenges within the time provided.. Both had a equal opportunity to challenge. Only one did. So the Supreme Court simply changed the result. Where was the equal protection violation? Both had the same opportunity. One exercised it; the other did not.
Posted by scalia fan - 4 months, 4 days, 13 hours, 20 minutes ago
Is Scalia tortured over by the fact that his vote allowed Bush to steal the election, at enormous costs to America? I hope so.
Posted by Dave Ashley - 4 months, 4 days, 13 hours, 11 minutes ago
The equal protection violation wasn’t in regards to Bush or Gore, but with the voters. I don’t recall if it was discussed in the opinion because it was rushed, but I’m pretty sure the Constitution trumps any procedure Florida may have had in place for a recount.
Posted by Anonymous - 4 months, 4 days, 13 hours, 2 minutes ago
Has anyone considered that the same problem with regard to popular votes and delegates occurred in the Kennedy/Nixon presidential election of 1960? Kennedy won the delegates, NOT the popular vote. Perhaps our system of voting needs revision. This is the responsibility of the legislature, not the supreme court or the executive branch.
Posted by Chris Bellovary - 4 months, 4 days, 12 hours, 59 minutes ago
I remember studying Bush v. Gore in law school during my course on election law. Quite frankly, the Florida Supreme Court’s decision followed made sense. They tackled it just like any other run of the mill case that dealt with statutory interpretation, and followed previous precedent to arrive at a decision.
The USSC’s decision did not. When you state in your opinion that it should not be used for future precedent, as was done in the USSC decision, that’s a pretty good signal that you know you are on shaky legal footing. The Article II, §1, cl.2 argument the USSC used to say that “legislature thereof may direct” means that the power is only in the state legislature’s power indicates that the process is not subject to judicial review. That seems, well, ridiculous.
When you say that there is no judicial review over the subject, even though it deals with interpreting state statutes, then how are those disputes to be settled? If that is true, then where was the USSC’s authority to rule as they did? That argument also completely ignores Article III, where it states that that if the state doesn’t decide it goes to the US Congress. If the two houses of congress can’t decide, it goes back to the Governor of the state, which makes it clear that the power is not solely held by the state legislature.
I could go on, but I don’t want to take too much space. It was a simple interpretation of state law, and if the state couldn’t come to a conclusion in time, the Constitution already had a mechanism to handle that. I think the grounds for the USSC to intervene were flimsy at best and a mockery of our system of federalism at worst. It certainly was one of the worse pieces of legal reasoning that I have ever seen come out of our modern court.
Posted by Steve Perkins - 4 months, 4 days, 12 hours, 55 minutes ago
I don’t really understand this argument that the SCOTUS helped Bush “steal” the 2000 election. Given that the recounts ultimately showed that Bush DID win the Florida vote, it is more accurate to say that the SCOTUS merely prevented Gore from stealing the election.
Whether or not you believe that Bush turned out to be a horrible President (I certainly won’t argue against that), there’s no injustice here. Gore lost… move on.
Posted by Mcg333 - 4 months, 4 days, 12 hours, 51 minutes ago
This is exactly what the problem is. Regardless of whether I agree with the decision or not, we are not able to separate our political opinions (left OR right) from the analysis of Bush v. Gore. The issue is inherently political. I’m sure each side can cite numerous sources supporting their opinion. The validity of each of those sources can be endlessly argued. Scalia said his decision was not based on political opinion. Yet, still I feel that I have yet to read one post (or opinion) that isn’t largely swayed by some sort of political opinion or higher ground justification.
Posted by concerned - 4 months, 4 days, 12 hours, 18 minutes ago
Most people, despite their best intentions, are biased in their decisionmaking from time to time. The sad thing is that we humans are least able to recognize our own biases when we are, in fact, the most biased. Scalia’s statement that his own decisionmaking on the court is not biased simply can’t be granted any weight. In fact, one worries most about bias from those who boldly assert their lack of bias. His cavalier attitude--"get over it"--only makes it worse.
Gore v Bush was a flagrant example of Supreme Court overreaching. The deciision disregarded a directly applicable Constitutional procedure, based on a claim of a practical concern (that Florida would not resolve the issue ‘in time’).
What is more worrisome is that the current makeup of the Court will likely leave us over the next several decades with a number of similarly biased, ideological decisions.
Posted by DLambert - 4 months, 4 days, 12 hours, 3 minutes ago
The real issue here is not whether Bush v. Gore was decided “correctly” but whether Saclia’s decision in that case fits within what he professes to be his theory of the Constitution. It clearly does not, and this (and other cases in which Scalia has similarly departed from his overarching theory when it did nor lead to the result he apparently wanted to reach) suggests that he is, at his core, a very activist judge that uses his overarching theories as a way to mask his activism.
With respect to Bush and the Court’s involvement in the 2000 election, whether or not Bush actually won Florida, it appears quite likely that history will not treat Bush or the Court’s involvement in his election kindly. And by the way, wasn’t the issue presented to the Court in 2000 the ULTIMATE political question?
Posted by Chris Bellovary - 4 months, 4 days, 11 hours, 15 minutes ago
DLambert is absolutely correct in that Scalia is just as much of an activist judge as any other. I agree with a number of Scalia decisions (including an 8 to 1 decision in which he was in the dissent), but he does use textualism and original intent when it achieves the result he wants, and he also argues against those same principles when they would lead to a result that does not fit his worldview. Just like any good lawyer, he can argue both sides of that coin equally well.
There has been a lot of discussion in this forum about the fact that Bush would have won that election anyway. The most comprehensive vote review that I know of used four standards of review for counting the votes; depending on the standard used, Bush won three and Gore won one. It seems reasonable to believe that Bush probably would have indeed won after a full recount, but it is also possible he would have lost. It all depended on the standard of review ultimately selected. The fact is, we will never be certain, and that is because the Bush v Gore decision made any further vote counts completely irrelevant. At a time when the outcome was unknown, the practical effect was that the USSC decision ultimately short circuited the processes and substituted the Court’s judgment in lieu of whatever may have resulted out of the recounts. 5 Justices agreed with that part of the decision, and 4 did not.
Now whether that was the correct decision or not has to depend solely on the merits of the legal arguments used by the Court. So if people want to discuss whether or not that was a proper legal decision, or simply a political one, I suggest sticking to the arguments used in the case.
Posted by 1E - 4 months, 4 days, 11 hours, 7 minutes ago
I agree with Chris Bellovery above.
1) The US SCOTUS’s decision made little sense. There was no reason for them to rule on the issue. They could have punted it back to Florida given that it was an in-state decision on how to count the ballots. They could have provided recommendations, but I think Bush v. Gore decision was too activist.
2) I agree with some of the other sources that Bush would have won anyway. However you slice it - either by recount, sending it through the House and the Senate (both Republican at the time), etc., Bush would have won.
The take home point, as Chris argues, is that this was an interventionist decision. Whatever the practical effect is irrelevant, it was wrong on the logic.
Posted by Gary Wollberg - 4 months, 4 days, 11 hours, 5 minutes ago
I will not “get over it,” and Bush v. Gore will go down in history for what it obvisouly was: an abondonment of principle for partisan preference.
Posted by K - 4 months, 4 days, 10 hours, 32 minutes ago
Seriously, just get over it and move on with your lives. And, while you’re at it, get back to work.
Posted by R - 4 months, 4 days, 10 hours, 17 minutes ago
Hey K, follow your own advice!
“Get over it!” Now THERE’s a thoughtful comment from one of the highest judges in the land.
No wonder he and Clarence Thomas are so palsy-walsy. “Get over it” is about the best he can come up with as well.
Posted by William Newbill - 4 months, 4 days, 9 hours, 48 minutes ago
How does one get over the theft of a presidential election? Apparently by doing what most americans consider their most important civic duty, shopping at the mall.
We’ll get over it, Mr. Justice Scalia on a cold day hell. Americans have the government they deserve and it isn’t the “greatest country in the world” by any means, not even close.
Posted by Jerry - 4 months, 4 days, 9 hours, 20 minutes ago
Re we have the government we deserve. That is certainly true.
Posted by Rick - 4 months, 4 days, 8 hours, 39 minutes ago
Interesting that those who whine about “counting every vote” in Florida in 2000 want to disenfranchise the same voters in the 2008 primary. “Count every vote” when it helps your candidate.
Posted by anonymous - 4 months, 4 days, 5 hours, 8 minutes ago
I generally take a “count every vote even if it hurts your candidate” position. Technically, that really isn’t even a legal issue, since they are private parties and get to set their own internal rules (with a few exceptions). However, I also take a position that elections need to be fair.
The democratic primaries though pose a large conundrum, because two important issues are in direct conflict - Fairness vs. disenfranchisement. Most candidates did what the national parties requested, and didn’t campaign in Florida or Michigan, so neither of those were fair primaries. So they are left with:
1: Seat the delegates, knowing that the results are not what would have occurred in a fair contest.
2: Don’t seat the delegates, and end up disenfranchising the voters from those states.
When faced with a dilemma where one party played by the rules, and the other broke the rules, I’m usually going to side with the one that played by the rules. The Florida Democratic Party could have fixed this by (a) attempting to oppose moving the date forward instead of supporting it, or (b) holding a second primary that conformed to the rules. So not only did they create the problem, they ignored the one method of resolving the dilemma in time for their national convention.
Sometimes, it is worth making leaders pay the price for screwing over their constituents, and it was the state parties that did that, the national party is still playing by the rules they laid out beforehand.
Posted by George Sly - 4 months, 4 days, 3 hours, 22 minutes ago
Number 20 is incorrect, Kennedy did win the popular vote but not by much. In the 2000 election, Mr. Bush did lose the popular vote. The electoral college is an anachronism that should be abolished. We have had at least three presidents (R. Hayes, B. Harrison & G.W. Bush) who lost the popular vote but won the office. None of them are shining examples of presidential leadership.
Also as to the Florida recount, the problem was the election itself. Fifteen thousand people mostly black were denied the right to vote supposedly because they were convicted felons. A review after the election showed most did not even have an arrest record let alone a conviction. That taints the result.
I agree the court was biased and I believe that Justice Scalia hoped to be made Chief Justice as a reward for his vote. It did not happen because Chief Justice Rehnquist stayed on the court and Scalia could not be confirmed as a replacement when the chief justice died. Like Justice Goldberg, Scalia would have been filibustered to death.
Posted by brw - 4 months, 4 days, 2 hours, 1 minute ago
Count every vote! Just like counting every Michigan and Florida primary vote in the DNC primary? oh wait…
Posted by teegyeff - 4 months, 3 days, 21 hours, 53 minutes ago
The problem with the Florida recount isn’t that Bush & his crew ultimately won the vote. The problem was that they didn’t CARE whether they actually won, so long as they got the result they wanted.
Posted by Trevor - 4 months, 3 days, 15 hours, 50 minutes ago
Deaddoornail, I think that you’re right: “9-11 wouldn’t have happened if Al Gore had been President.” That statement of course relies upon the flawed reasoning that one man and his administration could have set the conditions for such a calamity with less than two years in office. Those familiar with how government really works understands that a President will make few monumental changes during his first two years in office--forced instead to finish executing the policies that his predecessor set into motion before he can shift policy to fit his own agenda. The war on terror started in the late 70s and early 80s; do your research. We’ve been attacked for years, but never before like 9-11. If anyone set the stage for 9-11 to occur it was Bill Clinton and the manner in which his administration neglected our defense and intelligence systems/policies. I’m surprised that you aren’t advocating that George Bush ordered 9-11 to happen. You and I both know that he’s not smart enough to pull that off…
Posted by Elliott - 4 months, 3 days, 7 hours, 13 minutes ago
To 36, stop conflating 2 separate issues. All the candidates names did not even appear on the ballot in Michigan and it was known from the start that the ballots wouldn’t count.
The problem in Bush v. Gore is, as many have said, not about who would have won a recount. The issue was about a SCOTUS that consistently professed minimal interference in states’ rights suddenly doing a U-turn in one case and then trying to limit the precendent to that case. Telling people to get over Bush v. Gore is like telling the interned Japanese-Americans in Kourematsu to get over it. Both are decisons that show the Court at its lowest ebb
Posted by deaddoornail - 4 months, 3 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes ago
BUSH DID ORDER 9-11! AL GORE IS NOT JUST A MAN, BUT A DEMIGOD!
Posted by buckeyelegal - 4 months, 2 days, 11 hours, 59 minutes ago
Deaddoornail--I sincerely hope that you are kidding with your Post 40. Hopefully, your statement and hyperbole are meant to be humorous. Whatever the case, your posts are the sort of shockingly ignorant but wildly amusing commentary that make reading these comments through to the end worthwhile. I’m surprised, though, that someone with an advanced degree (assuming you graduated law school) would take such a stark, ill-informed position.
Posted by Al Gore - 4 months, 2 days, 10 hours, 20 minutes ago
It is true, I am almost a God.
Posted by Jeremy D. Sussman - 4 months, 1 day, 6 hours, 50 minutes ago
The 2000 election was stolen.
1. Ballot boxes from three central counties disapppeared for an hour and a half. Bush won two of these counties
2. Military absentee ballots were tampered with
3. The infamous Palm Beach County ballot
4. Disenfranchised blacks.
5. Harassment in the recount
6. Scalia should have recused himself due to his daughter’s role in the “transition team”
All together, this election was worthy of a banana republic.
Posted by TG - 4 months, 1 day, 5 hours, 43 minutes ago
Lawyers should know better. The issue wasn’t who should be president. The question was weather Florida’s already existing process was inconsistent with the constitution. If you can’t grasp that, then you should be doing something else for a living. And if you think it was unconstitutional, then you must necessarily think that more than half the states’ elections are unconstitutional since Florida’s procedures were no worse than most, including California. So, to invalidate the process in Florida would have been to invalidate virtually every election in the modern era. Thats a blatently ignorant and partisan position to take.
Missing ballots, government conspiracies and UFOs . . . people ought to grow up. The question Florida had to deal with was whether someone who didn’t cast a legal ballot (i.e. there was no clear indication of their intent other than a dimple in a pre perforated piece of paper which a 2 year old could perforate despite the fact that every other race on the ballot had the voter’s intent clearly indicated) should have their votes counted by psychicly divining their intent. Florida said they only wanted to count legal ballots, the Dems wanted psychics to decide the fate of the country in their favor. The Florida Supreme Court said Florida has an established process and that process is consistent with the Constitution, the Dems said, “we want to win” and the US Supreme Court said the Florida Court was right. Moreover, the insane amount of time the whole process was taking threatened to prevent the entire state’s vote from being certified in time, thus disenfranchising an entire state, which would have been unprecedented. Gore didn’t care because he figured that by screwing Florida, he could get the “W”. There’s a ringing endorsement for the man right?
Whether you or I like it or not and whether or not it is perfect, Florida’s process is/was not inconsistent with the Constitution, which says almost nothing about the rules a state has to have in place (quit yapping and look for yourselves. For gosh sakes you are supposed to be trained legal scholars).
What else do you losers want the Supreme Court to do without regard for questions of Constitutionality? Want a raise? Petition the court. Want a bigger house? Petition the Court. Don’t like your neighbor, Petition the Court to have them killed. Asking the Court to make up rules about what a state is supposed to do in the 11th hour of an election is just plain partisanship and stupidity.
Not that anyone ought to have to address it, but no credible person with an IQ over 75 not having MAJOR political biases can point to any credible claims of wrongdoing like stolen ballots or secret meetings in the woods beyond blogs and political hacks crying about the outcome. Not to mention no one in the Democratic party ever complained when Huey Long, George Wallace or Bill Clinton received more Democratic votes in their state elections than there were then living registered Democrats.
And, yes, the current situation with the primaries is ENTIRELY RELEVANT. Your next president may be chosen by a bunch of entrenched political royalty while literally millions of ballots go uncounted because of some administrative screw up and some archaic rules right? Yup, that sure sounds like grade A first class hyprocacy. “But, its a union, not the government and they have the right to establish their own rules,” JUST LIKE FLORIDA DID.
Everybody knew the rules going in. You can’t cry about the rules JUST because you didn’t win. Again, ITS NOT UNCONSTITUTIONAL! You people are supposed to be lawyers who can understand this stuff.
As for how much better life would be . . . on what planet can any thinking person possibly allege that 9/11 wouldn’t have happened? The whole freaking thing was planned while Gore was VP. The only difference would be that if Gore followed in his former bosses footsteps, there would have been a lot of fist pounding on the table and nothing would have happened, until the next attack, which would have come a lot sooner with Bin Laden remaining in control of Afghanistan.
Besides, it was Bill Clinton who turned the congress to a Republican majority, and George Bush who turned the congress over to the Democrats. Chances are Gore would have just increased the Republican majority.
And for those members of the bar who failed civics or didn’t pay attention in ConLaw, look up the Connecticut Compromise on Google and see how it is the cornerstone of the formation of our republic (no, the US is not and has never been a democracy people) and why we have both a House and Senate with an electoral college having the same number. The electoral college has NOTHING TO DO WITH the lack of telephones and TVs in the 1700s as so many of the unimformed seem to think. It and the Senate are the reason we live in the United States of America, and not the People’s Republic of California-New York.
Posted by Vinnie - 4 months, 12 hours, 35 minutes ago
Let’s not forget that all 9 justices are hypocrites. The article says the decision was 7-2 on the main ballot issue, but let’s not forget it was 5-4 on the result. That’s 5 conservative justices voting in a constitutionally LIBERAL way in order to get their political party’s candidate into office. But there were also 4 liberal justices voting in a constitutionally CONSERVATIVE way in hopes of getting their party’s candidate into office. Not a single one of them has an ounce of integrity.
Posted by Byron - 3 months, 3 weeks, 1 day, 12 hours, 25 minutes ago
Bush took office 8 months or so before 9/11. I hardly did anything policy wise. Then to go even further and say a policy he implemented had enough time to influence radical islam to the point of planning and carrying out 9/11 is asinine. You give Bush far too much credit. he’s a putz, not a damn ingenious Dr Evil with a Texan accent!