Word: bracingly
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...testimony of the vice president's first witness, political scientist Kimball Brace, was breathtakingly inept: The bedraggled wonk spent most of his time on the stand fumbling with 40-year-old voting machines and inadvertently shaking handfuls of chads onto Judge Sauls' desk. By the time Bush attorney Phil Beck had finished his cross examination, Brace had failed to support his theory that there might be structural problems or inconsistencies with the left-hand side of the Votomatic voting machine. He'd also all but admitted there was no reason to doubt the canvassing boards' ability to count their...
...while he cut away at the technical truth of Brace's claims, Beck did something else - he goosed the passionate and pontification-prone witness into helping the Bush team with its backup plan. As Brace defended the integrity of some dimples, he got Brace to valiantly defend the abilities of canvassing boards to discern dimpled intent. Whoops. Boies, looking for another 600 votes, is also suing for a recount of the hand count in Palm Beach. If Gore's witness for his case in Miami-Dade turns out to be credible, he'll have done some work for Bush...
...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...
...this being a court of law, it's not likely that Sauls missed the sight of most of Brace's claims wilting under scrutiny. Gore needed a scientist up there, an engineer, not a witness who tried to dig himself out of holes with lines like "a small office called President of the United States" and how a hand count in Miami-Dade being "in accordance with the principles of the country." And not one (this was the very first witness; Gore had a statistician up next, and Bush has a current list of 20) that consumed...
...understand the principles of the country," Sauls drawled at Brace near the end. "Let's deal with the relevance to this case...