Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has proven many times that he is not a Justice who bases decisions on the law, he is a Justice who bases his decisions on partisanship — the Republican Neoconservative agenda — proving himself both unfit for the Supreme Court, and a liar.
In yet another disgraceful act, Scalia, while being interviewed about his book, told The Telegraph UK — another questionable tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, owner of FOX News, The Wall Street Journal and over a hundred other unreputable sources whose primary function is to serve as President Bush’s propaganda pushers — that Al Gore was to blame for the 2000 election mess. Scalia told the newspaper that if Al Gore had conceded instead of filing suit, none of the scandalous decisions to give George W. Bush the White House would have happened.
Scalia lied. Bush was responsible for the lawsuit and for taking it to the Supreme Court.
Scalia reportedly insisted that his controversial decision, along with four other justices, to stop votes being recounted in Florida was because the method was unconstitutional and it was too late to consider other options was “absolutely right.” That was, in his usual way, another lie.
Vanity Fair Investigation
A very lengthy, detailed investigation conducted by a couple of reporters from Vanity Fair revealed what happened and how five Supreme Court Justices, including Scalia, disgraced this country.
Six hours after the networks projected that Florida would go to Gore and shoddy reporting done by the Voter News Service, John Ellis — a cousin of George W. Bush’s who worked at FOX News — called the state and the election for Bush. Within minutes, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN did the same thing.
Gore phoned Bush to congratulate him. As Gore was enroute to give his concession speech, Nick Baldick, Gore’s chief operative in Florida, saw that something was seriously wrong. Voter News Service had guessed that 180,000 votes were still outstanding. In actuality, there were 360,000 votes yet to be counted. A computer glitch gave negative 16,000 votes for Gore in Volusia county. As more votes were counted, Bush’s lead continued withering.
Just before delivering his concession speech, Gore was trailing Bush by only 600 votes. Gore didn’t know that. Gore was prevented from delivering his speech as he was stepping on stage to give it. When Gore found out he called Bush back to inform him that he was not conceding. Bush responded by telling Gore that the networks had already called the results and that the numbers provided by Jeb Bush, George’s brother were correct.
Bush Gets Help From Brother Jeb
All kinds of voter fraud and racial discrimination in Florida led to the ‘confusion’ in the 2000 election. Fraudulent electronic voting machines and fraudulent butterfly ballots designed by Katherine Harris, who went on to spend four years in the U.S. House of Representatives, then Florida’s elected secretary of state — a Democratic supervisor of elections who changed to Republican after the 2000 election — in a state governed by George Bush’s brother Jeb Bush. Once Gore asked for a recount in four counties, and George Bush’s lead went from 1,784 votes to 327 votes, Republicans knew they had to stop the recount. James Baker, part of the Bush election team filed suit in federal court to stop the manual recounts. Republicans would later accuse Gore of taking the election to court. In the Telegraph UK article, Gore repeated the SAME EXACT LIE.
Games were intentionally played to delay the recount, killing time. After playing all the games and all kinds of excuses, Harris decided that a recount wasn’t necessary and she was going to certify the election declaring Bush the winner. Hours later a judge over-ruled her declaring the recount could proceed. When she was over-ruled, Baker issued a public threat implying that incoming House Speaker Tom Feeney, Florida’s leading Republican legislator, would take matters into his own hands. Feeney proposed voting in a slate of electors pledged to George W. Bush. As Bush’s lead continued eroding, Republicans were freaking out. In usual Republican tradition, games and stall tactics perpetuated into lies and propaganda.
The day before Thanksgiving, Bush’s campaign turned to the U.S. Supreme Court asking them to stop the recounts. Bush’s petition asking the court to take action initially went to Justice Anthony Kennedy. Gore’s campaign asked the court to ignore the plea. Kennedy urged his colleagues to take the case on.
Scalia Pushes His Own Agenda
Then Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Sandra Day O’Connor sided with Kennedy and wanted the court to decide the case. When several of the court clerks heard the decision, they lost faith in the judicial system. They also wondered why a majority of the court agreed to consider the Florida ruling unless they wanted it overturned to have the recounts shut down.
When Rehnquist began drafting a ruling simply asking the Florida Supreme Court to clarify its decision as to whether it had based its ruling on the state constitution — which the Bush team had said was improper (imagine that) — or had acted under state statute which was arguably permissible.
When the Florida Supreme court again ordered a statewide recount of all undervotes (more than 61,000 ballots missed by the voting machines for one reason or another), Bush’s team ran back to the U.S. Supreme Court asking them to step in and halt it.
Scalia urged his colleagues to grant a stay immediately, even before Gore had a chance to respond. Bush’s lead on Gore was narrowing and Bush’s team expected Gore would pull ahead. Scalia was convinced that all manual recounts were illegitimate, saying such recounts would cast ‘a needless and unjustified cloud’ over Bush’s legitimacy. The discouraged clerks were amazed at how brazenly Scalia was pushing his own partisan agenda. The U.S. Supreme Court ended up stopping the recount. Much more thorough information regarding the disgraceful U.S. Supreme Court decision and how it evolved can be found in the article from Vanity Fair.
And of course, complicit corporate media, performing their usual misinformation campaign, reported one year after the election that had the U.S. Supreme Court not intervened in the recount, Bush still would have won the election by the slimmest of margins. In reality, after all the ballots were counted, it was found that Gore would have beaten Bush.
Racial Discrimination and Jeb Bush’s Government
Adora Obi Nweze, the president of the Florida State Conference of the N.A.A.C.P. was told she couldn’t vote when she went to her polling place because she had voted absentee. The problem was that she hadn’t. Other African-Americans showed up at their polling places and were told their names weren’t on the rolls. Others were told to leave when the polls closed, despite having waited in line for hours to vote while nonAfrican-Americans were allowed to get in line at the same time. Others were told they couldn’t vote because they were registered felons — despite the fact that they weren’t.
U.S. Congresswoman Corrine Brown, followed to her polling place by a local television crew, was told she couldn’t vote because her ballot had been sent to Washington D.C. so she couldn’t vote in Florida. After waiting two and a half hours she was allowed to cast her ballot. Thousands of students registered by Brown to vote months prior to the election were told they were not on the rolls when they went to vote.
These problems were the result of Jeb Bush’s government. Disenfranchment of African-American voters in Florida pertained to many facets of the election — from the equipment used to the actions of key local election officials, to the politically motivated manipulation of arcane Florida law — and to the knowing passivity of Jeb Bush himself.
Florida is one of six states that uses a ‘felon list’ to prevent people from voting. Florida has had racial problems for some time. Majority Republican legislation was responsible for upgrading certain misdemeanors to felonies and created dozens of new felonies that disproportionately impacted the urban poor. More on the ‘felon list’ and other lists manipulated by Jeb Bush’s government and the games they played to keep people from voting can be found in the article from Vanity Fair.
Enough Of The Lies
Scalia flatly denied that there was any partisan prejudice involved in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, instead implying that there were partisan decisions in the Florida Supreme Court’s ruling. As noted by Robyn E. Blumner from The St. Petersburg Times Online, blatant partisanship is what made the Bush. v. Gore decision such a blow to the integrity of the U.S. Supreme Court. Justices in the majority contorted the law and normative court procedure to reach the result they wanted.
Then Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Justices Scalia, Thomas, O’Connor and Kennedy sent memos to their colleagues offering different rationale for ruling in Bush’s favor. An O’Connor clerk told fellow clerks that O’Connor was determined to stop the recount. These five justices were unhinged from the law — operating purely in political guise void of legitimacy. Bush was appointed to the Presidency because five politically corrupt federal judges wanted him there, not because of the law.
Rehnquist died and O’Connor retired. Kennedy and Thomas need to be dealt with. Scalia lied again, providing another example of why Supreme Court judges should be elected, not appointed by Presidents and should be removed from the bench. Of course, you want to wait until after Bush leaves office, or you’ll have the same partisanship that has been responsible for destroying America these past seven plus years. Blaming Gore for taking it to court is a blatant lie that wreaks of deceptive Republican politics. Bush was responsible for taking the issue to the courts. More details of the Bush v. Gore lawsuit can be found from Cornell University Law School. Enough of the lies Mr. Scalia. It needs to stop and you need to be held accountable.
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