Posted on 04/30/2013 12:47:48 AM PDT by Lmo56
The retired justice acknowledges that the ruling that put Bush in the White House hurt the court's reputation ...
Seven years after retiring from the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O'Connor is second-guessing what she says was the most controversial ruling of her 25 years on the high court — Bush v. Gore, which decided the 2000 presidential election. O'Connor — appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1981 — was the swing vote who gave conservatives a 5-4 majority, and put George W. Bush in the White House. She says now that the court only "stirred up the public" and "gave the court a less-than-perfect reputation" by stepping in to end Florida's manual recount, giving the state's electoral votes — and the presidency — to Bush. "[The court] took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue," O'Connor told the Chicago Tribune editorial board recently. "Maybe the court should have said, 'We're not going to take it, goodbye.'"
(Excerpt) Read more at theweek.com ...
Ha! If Sandy really thinks that I take it as a sign that senility has set in. As John Riggins once told her - lighten up, Sandy baby!
With each election as far back as I can remember, the losing candidate once he knew it was over, would call the victor and concede as a show of national unity to help bring the country back together after the election. This also happened in 2000, with one difference... Gore called back a little later and reneged. In the World of Gentleman, a renege is accepting and making public the fact that your own word is not good. That fateful night, Al Gore made the choice between congratulating GWB for winning a good election or dividing our Country in order to give him a last chance of being president. Gore chose the path of a tyrant instead of the path of a great leader.
Exactly.
Senility is setting in badly to a Justice that wasn’t all that sharp to begin with.
HORSE HOCKEY !!!
Actually, she's absolutely right about this. Don't think of the U.S. Supreme Court as an umpire, but as the commissioner's office of Major League Baseball. Just because a manager files a protest against an umpire's call, it doesn't mean the commissioner's office has to hear the case. They can legitimately determine that the manager has no standing to bring the case.
That's exactly what the U.S. Supreme Court should have done in Bush v. Gore. The U.S. Constitution has very clear provisions that covered the situation in 2000, and by agreeing to take on the case, the Supreme Court basically tossed those provisions out the window. If Florida could not determine its own Electoral Votes by the time the Electoral College met, then the national Electoral Vote would be held without Florida's being counted. Neither candidate would have had enough Electoral Votes to win the election outright, so the president would have been elected in a special vote by Congress. Bush would have won that election, too -- so the irony is that the Court's involvement was meaningless in the end.
Dunno. Have to find my car keys first
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
The problem ISN’T losing your car or car keys, it is remembering whether you drove there or not.
Don’t worry SDO, any reputation as a defender of the US Constitution and American principles were lost with the Traitorous SCOTUS 5-4 ruling on ObamaCare by POS Justce Roberts.
In baseball games, not in hockey games, with or without horses..
Federal courts should have no role whatsoever in our elections. The justices of the Supreme Court have expanded their jurisdiction to an extent never intended by the authors of Article III. They are NOT umpires for the political system.
The written Constitution anticipated EXACTLY the situation that arose on Florida, and Article II, as amended by XI and XII, provided the EXACTLY correct solution - a solution which, if implemented, would have left George W. Bush sworn in on January 20, 2001 with much better title to his office than he had.
The Secretary of State of Florida had already certified a slate of Electors for President and Vice President. AT MOST, the Florida Supreme Court could have ordered the appointment of a rival slate of Gore electors. The Republican Florida Legislature was prepared to exercise its exclusive power to appoint electors if needed.
The Electoral Vote Counting Act passed after 1876 lays out what Congress is supposed to do in this situation, which is to accept the correct slate after deliberation.
If the legal slate was accepted by the Republican majority, Bush would have been elected. If both slates had been disqualified, making no candidate with a majority, the House, voting by states (the Republicans then controlling 30 states), Bush would have been elected.
Only if the Republican majority had certified the illegally appointed Gore electors, instead of the electors chosen according to the method prescribed in Article II ("as the [Florida] Legislature thereof shall direct") could Gore have been President.
So, we could have allowed the Founders' system to work as designed, or we could have asked the Supreme Court to assume even more illegitimate and unconstitutional power, and we chose - poorly.
Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh.
The SCOTUS (and her) actually followed that Constitution thingy.
Now, she ‘feels’ that’s a “bad thing”.
She sholda voted how she feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeels.
Yeech.
Except that, if the Constitution had been allowed to work as designed, it was impossible for Gore to become President.
LLS
See my #27.
What SCOTUS did by accepting jurisdiction was as far from the Constitution as I could have imagined.
George W. Bush's lawsuit was over a nonjusticeable political question. Both the Florida Legislature and the US Congress were in session and able to act. They were (and are) the SOLE Constitutional and legal authorities in the matter of the appointment of Electors and certification of their votes.
EVERY SINGLE EXERCISE OF JUDICIAL AUTHORITY IN THIS MATTER WAS UNCONSTITUTIONAL, as well as unwise.
It is a sign of how far we have fallen that, even here, people think the USSC can (and should) do any old thing that seems like a good idea.
The Florida supremes and their progressive activism is what caused the SCOTUS to become involved. That is also clear and codified into law. The SCOTUS could either hear the case or refuse and let the Florida supremes stand as law.
LLS
Yes, she did - and that duty was to deny cert for nonjusticeabillity.
Except that SCOFLA can't make laws in Florida, AND the sole power to appoint electors rested with the Legislature, which was sitting and ready to act.
The appointment of electors, and the counting (certification) of their votes, are not within the scope of powers granted in Article III.
Yep... And to lead the country after 9/11. Imagine the unmitigated disaster if Gore had been in the White House at that time.
It's worth noting that the Federal courts actually got it right in another case that was making news a couple of years after that. I'm referring to the situation in New Jersey where a corrupt worm named Bob Torricelli was replaced on the ballot by that fossil Frank Lautenberg after the ballot deadline had passed. It was the subject of a high-profile legal dispute, and the Supreme Court eventually refused to hear the case.
Their rationale was sound, and it was the same rationale that should have applied in Florida in 2000:
The court basically said that even a blatant violation of state law like the post-deadline ballot change in New Jersey was not covered under Federal law. The only Federal statute that would have applied was the Voting Rights Act, and in the New Jersey case there wasn't a single person who ever claimed that the ballot change had violated his or her right to vote. In other words, it's not the job of the Federal courts to correct a fouled-up state government.
Actually, I’ve said for years that the U.S. might have been better off with Gore in the White House on 9/11. He was always a calculating political @sshole, and if he thought it would have enhanced his stature in history he would have had no qualms about turning all of Afghanistan — and maybe Pakistan, too — into a smoking radioactive ruins. And the U.S. media would have given him all the political cover he would have needed, too.
For the umpteen thousandth time, the Supreme Court did not install Bush as President. What it did was tell Florida, which had already passed the counting deadline provided for in its state law, to stop counting and certify its electors. That certification was for Bush by 537 votes. (The part of me that likes irony has always wished that the margin had been exactly one vote more.)
Maybe Jim Joyce shouldn’t have made a call on that runner at first in the game with Andres Galarraga, right, Sandy Baby?
RE: #8, you are right. Also, he mentioned that Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution gives the state legislature the authority to appoint electors as it chooses, and the FL legislature (majority Republican) was prepared to do just that, esp. given the kangaroo leftist Supreme Court in that state.
If the supremes had not decided that case, we would have had a constitutional crisis, and perhaps civil war.
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