Word: harborers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
BUSH: I don't resent the Vice President's attempts. I did win the count and recount, in certain counties four times. There are rules and laws for a reason. But I harbor no bitterness...
...their dissents. The majority chose December 12 arbitrarily, bypassing the more equitable date of December 18 for no reason other than to cut Al Gore's legal options short. As Justice Ginsburg wrote in her opinion, "The December 12 'deadline' for bringing Florida's electoral votes into safe harbor lacks the significance the Court assigns it. Were that date to pass, Florida would still be entitled to deliver electoral votes Congress must count unless both Houses find that the votes 'had not been... regularly given.' The statute identifies other significant dates, specifying December 18 as 'the date electors shall meet...
...That debacle led to the Electoral Count Law of 1887, by which southern Democrats made sure the Supreme Court would never again be able to meddle with their election as long as they got their state business done six days before the electoral college voted - the safe harbor. (Sure, this was a law designed by and for segregationists, but that doesn't make it any less lawful.) And 124 years later, the five Justices who risked politicizing the highest court in the land by effecting George W. Bush's inauguration knew from history that it could get a lot worse...
...This year the safe harbor ended Tuesday, and it was all the justification Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, O'Connor and Kennedy needed to pull the plug on Al Gore. The decision has already come under fire from liberals for being thinly disguised interventionism, and they have a point. But what Rehnquist did can in fact be thought of as exquisitely federalist. He left it up to Florida. But he let the legislature, not the court, control the clock...
...would he think the Florida Supremes deserved to sail into that safe harbor? The state's high court had tried not once but twice to design a recount scheme that held up to equal protection provisions. Seven Justices said Saturday's count was a failure on those constitutional grounds. A third try might pass muster, it might not, but the way the Florida court had chewed up the past 35 days was certainly no reason to believe that Dec. 18 was any safer. And beyond that date lay constitutional madness not seen since, well...