Word: argumentative
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...ultimately, commonsense aspects of Brace's claims may make a lasting impression on Sauls. The idea that hanging chad happens - and can fool a machine scanner - is still a valid and sensible argument for a Miami-Dade manual recount, whatever the legal questions involved (that'll come later), and there was no evidence Sauls didn't see it. And when Beck had finished, and wiped the blood off his lips, Gore lawyer Zack made up some lost ground, bringing in a genuine Votomatic whose basin that was "filled to the brim with chad." The intuitive virtues of Brace's testimony...
...same time, I find the Republican argument that the courts are making law rather than interpreting it to be specious. What do you do when you're confronted with incompetent lawmakers and a legislature like Florida's that enacts imprecise and contradictory laws? You can't just throw up your hands and walk away. The court's job is to try to make sense out of statutes that don't always make sense...
...flow of the argument - adversarial, but often bordering on the arcane, at least for this idiot - also showed that some of the arguments in favor of broadcasting the court's sessions are probably exaggerated. In particular, the idea that the raw video would truly educate the viewing public more than legal analysts do seems a bit bogus, what with all this abstruse section 2 and section 5 and section 15 business. More likely, we laymen will focus on who gets off the best zingers - our armchair analysis determined by our pre-existing beliefs - then let Rush or Chris Matthews spin...
...show is an illusory one: It'll simply make us feel more enfranchised, informed and empowered than we are. But that doesn't mean it's not important, above all at a time when half the country is on the verge of feeling electorally swindled. There's a strong argument for broadcasting Supreme Court proceedings because we can, as an unambiguous, if symbolic, statement of who works for whom here. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, we paid for those robes...
...decision is a mild rebuke of Bush's argument against hand counts. A strong ruling in Gore's favor, having a similar effect of leaving Florida to its own devices, would be a slightly stronger one. But either would only require the Bush camp to continue the fight in the Florida courts, which it's doing anyway. Both of those would puff Gore's chest out a bit, but not change much once the dust settled...