Originally, the idea of a law was to set a general proscription, and whose individual application would be checked by the proper authority (judge or jury) to see if it was appropriate. In this system, the just result was paramount. This is the legal tradition that our own system was built upon.
It is the left which believed governments could, through careful design, craft laws in such detail that every possible permutation could be predicted (As Oliver Wendell Holmes reminded, "Hard cases make bad law."). Under the influence of the left, law became about following the process as opposed to a just resolution.
To a leftist, the Hornstines were perfectly justified in "gaming the game," as that is all the law is seen as. This is the same mentality that has the court throw out a confession because the accused hadn't had his Miranda warning read word-for-word, or which sports twice as much time in evidentiary hearings as is spent on an actual trial, trying to get the evidence thrown out. I'm sorry to see that you have bought in to this fallacy.
I reject your assertion that violating the spirit of the law cannot be punished just as severely as violating the letter of it. To do otherwise is to Clintonize...
I think you have it backwards. Wasn't it the conservatives, the Republicans, back during the Clinton years, who insisted that perjury was perjury, and wasn't it the Democrats who were insisting that since the lie was "just about sex" it didn't matter that it was under oath and a "technical" violation of the law?
And during the Florida fiasco in 2000, wasn't it the conservative Republicans who insisted that the election law be enforced as written, and the Democrats who wanted to follow the "spirit" of the law by trying to divine "the intent of the voter"?
And in 2002, in New Jersey, was it not again the conservative Republicans who wanted to uphold the state law, with the deadlines it had for replacing candidates, and the Democrats who insisted that the rules didn't really mean anything, that "fairness" was what mattered?
Aren't the Republicans the strict constructionists? Aren't we the ones who say you must play be the rules as written, and not just make them up as you go along so that you get the results you want?
This girl and her father followed the rules as written. As far as I can tell from the article, no one is disputing that, and no one is arguing about interpretation of the rules, or claiming that they are ambiguous. They just don't like the outcome -- and if the facts are as reported in the article, neither do I. But you don't change the rules after the game has started. As far as I can see, that's the conservative, Republican, strict constructionist philosophy. It's the other side who want to stand things on their head everytime they find themselves 537 votes behind.