Not sure I understand your premise. Who would you suspect would retire? Scalia, Thomas? During the next four years it might be Stevens or O'Connor, perhaps Ginsberg, which would make getting Bush out of office even more urgent for liberals and moderates.

Well first off, he said he was kidding, there was no whinning.

Second, as Botnst alluded to, it's not what the count ended up being, it was the process. The US Supremes stepped in and said that a state supreme court couldn't interprete state election laws.

Had the count gone on and Bush had won, no problem, had the FLA Supremes been allowed to rule on state election laws, no problem, but the way it was done was pretty shakey and not the court's proudest moment.

I thought, based on nothing in particular, that Rehnquist and O'Connor have been ready to retire for a while. They are both strong Republicans. I thought they would take W's election in 2000 as an opportunity to exit stage right and get a couple of nice, young right-wingers to take their place for the next generation or so.

dculkin, and koop, I leave the battle to you for a week, as I am off to fight mankind's eternal battle with the our oldest adversary, the fish. Battle on, you serve our cause well, and all you others who despise or are disgusted with what the right is doing to this country, keep it up!

See you all next week.

tight lines and cold beer

Rehnquist, certainly had liberals running for cover when Regan appointed him as CJ, has actually not been as much of a conservative idealogue as feared. O'Connor is presently popularly though of as the "swing" vote on the panel.

Kirk, I wish you good fishing.
However, you are wrong in contending that all votes are counted. In the case of absentees, they are NOT counted unless they could potentially affect the outcome. For example, if candidate "A" has a 30,000 vote plurality, and there are 10,000 absentess ballots. The absentees ballots are not counted becaause they could not have any possible affect on the outcome. If the plurality lead by candidate "A" were 5,000 votes, then the absentees ballots would be counted as they would obviously have an impact. Therefore I repeat that NO ONE KNOWS WHO WON THE POPULAR VOTE IN 2000.

As for the courts getting involved... It was regrettable. However, remember who started the process. For those with a sense of history, Nixon, showed more class than the dems in the 2000 election--he was encouraged to protest the votes in Cooke County, and Chicago Ill in the 1960 election. There were many irregularities, and his case might have won. However, he chose not to put the country thru that mess. Imagine, Nixon showing more class than.....anyone.

Contesting elections is not a matter who has class and who doesn't. If the second-place finisher has reason to believe the count was wrong, he or she has a duty to seriously consider calling for a re-count. The alternative might be disenfranchisement.

Kirk, have fun drowning those worms.

Recall that the state legislature must certify the election as valid. No matter what the count is, if the state legislature doesn't sanction it, then all electors are still up for grabs and the U.S. House of Representatives decides who is valid.

So lets say the FL Supreme's cherry picking had been allowed to go forward. The legislature could vote that the method was wrong and thus, invalid. That woul dhave sent the contested election to the Houe of Representatives.

Now recall that he FL legislature is dominated by Repos and the same with the House of Reps. The chances are probably about even that the FL legislature would not have validated the election. The Repo dominated House would then probably have voted to seat the Rep Electors, resulting in the same outcome.

It sounds messy, but it would have been strictly consitutional.

But I think that the Repos were cowards and didn't want to face the political fairestorm of not validating an election that the state Supreme Court said was fair. So they took the cowards way out and dumped it on US Supremes.

The US Supreme Court is not comprised of a single class of partisan. Yeah the Repo-leaners abdicated their traditional states-rights perspective. But recall that the Demo-leaners abandoned their own traditional centralized power position and discovered the hidden virtue of states rights. Amazing shifts from both sides and each of them self-righteously harrumphing about the other's lack of consistency.

They're all F-d up.

I disagree with your "military disaster" opinion, and Kerry IS a socialist....

.......but with the excerpt I quoted above, you've expressed quite eloquently one of the big reasons why I will probably end up voting Libertarian again, in spite of the fact that I'm not doing cartwheels over the candidate my favorite party is offering this time.

Mike

__________________
_____
1979 300 SD
350,000 miles
_____
1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy
_____
1985 300TD
270,000 miles
_____
1994 E320
not my favorite, but the wife wanted it

www.myspace.com/mikemover
www.myspace.com/openskystudio
www.myspace.com/speedxband
www.myspace.com/openskyseparators
www.myspace.com/doubledrivemusic

I could be wrong, but I bet you have absolutely no facts to back up that statement.

Well, the fact that he is in favor of raising taxes, while also being in favor of continuing and/or expanding existing social programs that have been nothing but downward-spiraling failures....that's a great place to start....

Redistribution of wealth. If that is not "socialist", I don't know what is....

Mike

__________________
_____
1979 300 SD
350,000 miles
_____
1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy
_____
1985 300TD
270,000 miles
_____
1994 E320
not my favorite, but the wife wanted it

www.myspace.com/mikemover
www.myspace.com/openskystudio
www.myspace.com/speedxband
www.myspace.com/openskyseparators
www.myspace.com/doubledrivemusic

Are you saying that Bush's tax cut didn't redistribute wealth?

By that definition, Bush is the bigger socialist here. Of course his re-distribution of wealth is upward rather than downward - does that make him a fascist instead?

__________________
'83 240D with 617.952 and 2.88
'01 VW Beetle TDI
'05 Jeep Liberty CRD
'89 Toyota 4x4, needs 2L-T
'78 280Z with L28ET - 12.86@110
Oil Burner Kartel #35

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b1...oD/bioclip.jpg

i dont know if i buy this unfit for command stuff. on cnn this morning, they had the guy who wrote the nasty book and they showed their campaingn commericial. they also had one guy who was actually on kerrys boat. he called the other guys a bunch of liars. the anti-kerry guys just looked like a bunch of angry old white dudes to me. angry old white dudes are starting to get to me. they just seem to attack everything and say nothing about what they are going to do, on both sides.