JUSTICE O'CONNOR: BUSH V. GORE NOT "COURT'S BEST EFFORT"Election Reform, Fraud & News Wed 1/24/07

[kpete]

Election Reform, Fraud & News Wed 1/24/07 JUSTICE O'CONNOR: BUSH V. GORE NOT "COURT'S BEST EFFORT"

JUSTICE O'CONNOR: BUSH V. GORE OPINION
NOT "COURT'S BEST EFFORT"

According to this NYT Review of Jan Crawford Greenberg's new book, Supreme Conflict ......... "As for former Justice O'Connor, she is quoted as saying of Bush v. Gore: 'I don't think what emerged in the last opinion was the court's best effort. It was operating under a very short time frame, to say the least. Given more time, I think we probably would've done better.'" The review quotes the book on other Justices' views of the case as well.

Books of the Times
‘Supreme Conflict’
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: January 23, 2007

..............

As for the 2000 Supreme Court decision that effectively handed the presidency to Mr. Bush on the basis of an unsigned majority opinion, Ms. Greenburg notes that it was made under “intense time pressure”:

“Midday on Saturday, Dec. 9, the court voted 5-4 to stop the recounts until it decided the issues in the case. It got briefs from both sides on Sunday afternoon. It heard arguments on Monday, and it announced its decision the next evening, Dec. 12, which was the official deadline for certifying electoral college votes.”

In this momentous case, Justice Kennedy sided with Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justices Scalia, Thomas and O’Connor to overturn the Florida Supreme Court, ruling that there could be no further counting of Florida’s disputed votes.

Ms. Greenburg writes that in the years since the Bush v. Gore decision, Justices Stephen Breyer and David Souter “have said they continue to believe they could have swayed Kennedy, if they’d only had more time,” while “the other liberal justices never thought it was possible,” regarding the case as effectively over on Saturday.

Justice Kennedy, for his part, Ms. Greenburg says, “scoffs at the suggestion he was on the fence.” Indeed, she quotes him saying of Justice Souter: “I think with one more day, I might have persuaded him.”

As for former Justice O’Connor, she is quoted as saying of Bush v. Gore: “I don’t think what emerged in the last opinion was the court’s best effort. It was operating under a very short time frame, to say the least. Given more time, I think we probably would’ve done better.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/23/books/23kaku.html?ex=1170219600&en=0da6bed1985f029d&ei=5070&emc=eta1Text

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[marmar]

1. Didn't O'Connor supposedly say "That's terrible!" when told Gore would win a Florida recount?

She can go to hell.

[On the Road]

2. I Believe She Said That on Election Day

during the evening when Gore was exceeding expectations.

[liberal N proud]

3. The most important decision they ever made and it wasn't their best work?

Thank for the screwing you did to the American people now and forever more.

[kpete]

4. DIEBOLD VOTING MACHINE KEY COPIED FROM PHOTO AT COMPANY'S OWN ONLINE STORE!

BLOGGED BY Brad ON 1/24/2007 6:05AM

DIEBOLD VOTING MACHINE KEY COPIED FROM PHOTO AT COMPANY'S OWN ONLINE STORE!

Princeton University Computer Scientists Confirm 'Secret' Key For Every Diebold Voting Machine 'Revealed' on Company Website!

Good lord in heaven. How dumb are these guys at Diebold?! Can you believe the United States has actually entrusted them to build a security system for the original U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights?!

After everything else. Now comes this.

It was revealed in the course of last summer's landmark virus hack of a Diebold touch-screen voting system at Princeton University that, incredibly, the company uses the same key to open every machine. It's also an easy key to buy at any office supply store since it's used for filing cabinets and hotel mini-bars! That is, if you're not a poll worker who already has one from the last time you worked on an election (anybody listening down there in San Diego?)

The Princeton Diebold Virus Hack, if you've been living in a cave, found that a single person with 60 seconds of unsupervised access to the system who either picked the lock (easy in 10 seconds) or had a key, could slip a vote-swapping virus onto a single machine which could then undetectably affect every other machine in the county to steal an entire election.

But the folks at Princeton who discovered the hack (after our own organization, VelvetRevolution.us, gave them the Diebold touch-screen machine on which to perform their tests) had resisted showing exactly what the key looked like in order to hold on to some semblance of security for Diebold's Disposable Touch-Screen Voting Systems.

But guess what? Diebold didn't bother to even have that much common sense.

more at:
http://www.rawstory.com/showarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bradblog.com%2F%3Fp%3D4066

[Benhurst]

5. The traitorous bitch is trying to rewrite history to cast herself in

a better light.

The Supreme Court was "operating under a very short time frame, to say the least" because the villains wanted to get the dirty deed done.

As Lady Macbeth said, "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly... ."

[La_Fourmi_Rouge]

6. Jaw-dropping admission.

Thanks, Justice! You are still a clown. Go away and STFU.

[kpete]

7. Insider trading stock sell-off by Ciber execs during EAC secrecy over voting machine test lab ban

January 23, 2007 at 09:34:18

Insider trading stock sell-off by Ciber execs during EAC secrecy over voting machine test lab ban

by Michael Richardson


Although the public was not informed by the Election Assistance Commission about its decision to not issue interim accreditation to Ciber, Inc., one of the nation's three previously certified test laboratories for electronic voting machines, the company executives were very aware they had lost a hold on the lucrative testing business.

While unknowing election officials around America continued to incorrectly claim their voting machines were properly tested and certified in the months leading up to the November 2006 elections several Ciber honchos quietly began a stock sell-off.

The EAC took over testing responsibilities for electronic voting machines from the National Association of State Election Directors in July 2006 and issued interim accreditation to two of the NASED certified test labs on August 15, 2006. The Ciber laboratory was left off the approved list for inadequate quality assurance testing and failure to document tests were performed.

For reasons the election agency still has not explained, the non-accreditation of Ciber was kept from public knowledge until a January 2007 article in the New York Times. Senator Diane Feinstein has written to the EAC demanding answers about the non-accreditation and subsequent secrecy about the test lab ban.

more at:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_michael__070123_insider_trading_stoc.htm

[racaulk]

8. Operating under a short time frame?

Wasn't there verbiage in the court's opinion that Bush v. Gore could not be used as precedent in any future case before the court? According to SDOC there was not enough time to consider and render a proper decision, but apparently there was plenty of time to make sure their asses were covered.

Please. This is just another lame-assed excuse from a partisan fascist enabler. She can kiss the fattest part of my ass!

:argh:

[kpete]

9. Jennings campaign to tout study discounting ballot design theory

Jennings campaign to tout study discounting ballot design theory
By Aaron Blake

A new academic study of voting in Florida’s 13th district congressional race refutes the prevailing opinion of experts that the large undervote in the race in November was likely due to poor ballot design.

Democrat Christine Jennings lost by 369 votes out of 240,000 cast, and has contended that the undervote — more than 18,000 Sarasota County ballots didn’t include a vote in the congressional race — could be attributed to malfunctioning electronic voting machines.

The new study points to an error message that the experts say correlates with the undervotes, as well as to voting patterns that show unusually high undervote rates for Democratic voters. The study’s authors say more information, specifically the secret software used by the voting machines, is required to draw any real conclusions.

The Jennings campaign plans to tout the study, which was researched independently by Stanford University computer science professor David Dill and Cornell University government professor Walter Mebane, as support for its appeal in a Florida court.

more at:
http://thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/012407/jennings.html

[The Backlash Cometh]

10. I hope she spends the rest of her days writing her regrets about that case.

[petgoat]

13. I'm sorry Rehnquist didn't live to face impeachment.

I hope O'Connor lives to see Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas impeached.

I think she's wrong that it wasn't their best work, though. I think it
was incredibly ingenious to cobble together a rationale for such a
bizarre decision--that it was more important to report the voting results
by an arbitrary date predicated on horseback travel times in days of mud
roads than it was to count the votes.

To do it they had to reason that the evil of counting ballots under
differing standards was so great that the solution was not to count them
at all.

Of course differing standards are used in every county in America, but nobody
has brought suit on that.

[MissWaverly]

26. Read the Betrayl of America

How the Supreme Court undermined the constitution and chose our president by
Vincent Bugliosi, Nation Books

"The court majority, after knowingly transformed the votes of 50 million Americans into nothing and throwing out all of the Florida undervotes, actually wrote that their ruling
was intended to preserve "the fundamental right to vote." That an election can be stolen
by the highest court in the land under the deliberate pretext of an inapplicable constitutional provision has got to one of the most frightening and dangerous events
ever to have occurred in this country." from the book back cover

[neoblues]

11. Link under "2. Post stories using..." seems broken. nt.

[kpete]

12. Election Integrity Bill Introduced in Congress

Election Integrity Bill Introduced in Congress
By Jeralyn, Section Legislation
Posted on Tue Jan 23, 2007 at 03:45:54 PM EST


Congresswoman Susan Davis (D-CA) has introduced the Federal Election Integrity Act (H.R. 101.) It would prohibit chief state election officials from engaging in political activity on behalf of federal candidates over whose elections the officials have supervisory authority.

How would this help? According to Rep. Davis's office (received by e-mail, no link)

This bill would prevent the troubling conflicts of interest that we saw in the cases of Ken Blackwell and Katherine Harris.

Whether the bill gets a hearing or even traction, depends in part on you. If you support it, contact your own member of Congress and ask them to sign on as co-sponsors of H.R. 101.

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/1/23/164554/093
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.00101:

[Warpy]

14. May she spend the rest of her days in intense guilt and shame

over the damage she did to this country and to the world by that one decision.

May she also awaken to just what she has been supporting all these years and to the true nature of conservatism and educate following generations on what to spot and how to stop it dead in its tracks.

[Lugnut]

15. Frick her

I hope her guilty conscience eats her up from the inside out forever.

[kpete]

16. The biggest purveyor of such hit lists is Choice Point

Greg Palast has an important response to the State of the Union speech:

Off the Rails: Big Oil, Big Brother Win Big in the State of the Union
Published by Greg Palast January 24th, 2007 in Articles
by Greg Palast
Tuesday, 23 January, 2006

First, there was the announcement the regime will, “give employers the tools to verify the legal status of their workers.” In case you missed that one, the President is talking about creating a federal citizen profile database.

There’s a problem with that idea. It’s against the law...

And:

Will Big Brother abuse these snoop lists? The biggest purveyor of such hit lists is Choice Point, Inc. – those characters who, before the 2000 election, helped Jeb Bush purge innocent voters as “felons” from Florida voter rolls. Will they abuse the new super-lists? Does Dick Cheney shoot in the woods?

I never thought that the argument over immigration was intended to protect American jobs; indeed, Bush made clear his view that we should legalize underpaid Mexican labor. Bush is making a list, checking it twice -- a list of who are you and where you are, without which you can neither buy nor sell.
http://www.gregpalast.com/off-the-rails-big-oil-big-brother-win-big-in-the-state-of-the-union/#more-1570

via:
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/

[demnan]

17. So now the God Damned Bitch gets truthiness

n/t

[Land Shark]

18. It was an intense effort, a very bad opinion, but EFFORT clearly shown

part of the bush v gore excuse-making is the compressed time frame, claimed to be as short as one day (one book says they started with the final draft the morning the opinion was published). While that may be true as far as DRAFTING goes, the opinion nevertheless shows a lot of THOUGHT went into it, not necessarily thought directed at fully respecting all prior precedent or the facts of the case.

The debate here is generally among those who say Bush v Gore was an aberration, a legal coup d'etat, or a rushed botched job. O'Connor appears here to support the last of the three, but I'm not sure that's the best view. It would help to have been a fly on the wall in Scalia's and Rehnquist's chambers to have a much better idea about this...

[kpete]

19. Diebold is everywhere.

Diebold is everywhere.
by Gabriel Malor on Wed Jan 24, 2007

I was taking money from an ATM this morning, an ATM I'd used many times before and just happened to notice that the machine was made by Diebold. Why did I notice today? Because the darn thing freaked out declared that my card was "unreadable" and I was looking for a number to call.

http://www.talkleft.com/comments/2007/1/24/22232/7322/43#43

[Kurovski]

20. In downtown Seattle there is an old metal sign on a building that reads:

"Protected by Diebold alarm systems".

Oh, the irony.

Edit: Thanks, kpete!:thumbsup:

[tbyg52]

21. Spin, spin, spin

Does anyone have an old Newsweek? From at least a year or two ago, maybe more. Interviews with lots of people, paragraph sized, little pictures to go with, a two-page spread. O'Connor was one of them. She said flat out that she voted with the majority because she couldn't stand the thought of a Democrat appointing a bunch of Supreme Court justices. I wish I had torn it out. Can't find it online (searched archives). Has anyone else seen this? Does anyone still have it? I swear I saw it.

[roseBudd]

23. She said at a dinner party before the election she wanted Bush to win so she could retire

[Kurovski]

22. Kick to the top.(nt)

[tgnyc]

24. No. Fucking. Shit.

[mod mom]

25. Blood is on her hands and hopefully haunts her conscious! What an understatement!

[Senator]

27. It's Official: The bushkid has Never Been Legitimate

The BushvGore Edict has now been recanted by JustUs Sandy Simpleton.

Add to that Nino Scalia's latest "get over it" non-defense and it's case closed.

These enemies of our democracy should be sent to Gitmo until they say who put them up to it.

--