Pardon Me, Nino!
Scalia-Controlled SCOTUS Pulls the Most Partisan Stunt Since Ford Let Nixon Off the Hook
by Tamara Baker
Saturday, Dec. 9, 2000 -- SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA -- Well, what do you know? I, and virtually every legal authority in the U.S., was wrong.
We all thought that Don Nino Scalia would be more concerned about the integrity of his court, and of the judicial system as a whole, than trying to ensure that George W. Bush got to warm the Oval Office chair.
We all thought that, especially after barely five hours' worth of counting the undervotes showed Gore had already cut Bush's lead down from 154 to 96 votes (and with 5 of the 13 counties involved being heavily Republican ones, to boot), that Scalia would not want to do anything that looked like it might possibly be construed by anyone as thwarting the will of the people.
We all thought that Scalia might not want to have what is left of what once was a stellar legal reputation irreversibly besmirched by trying to prop up Bush's slimy Florida campaign -- especially now that the ChoicePoint 'voting while black' scandal has been all over both the print and broadcast media for the past week.
Some of us even thought that Scalia, in a truly rare show of honor, might recuse himself from the case because his own son is working for the same law firm employed by the Bush team.
But nooooooooooooo.
Antonin Scalia has now conclusively shown that as far as he is concerned, propriety, in either its actual form or even the appearance thereof, is not so important as doing the job for his Republican Party bosses. This is, after all, the man who is such a greedhead that he's actively (and rather tackily) lobbying for the dubious right to hit the lucrative lecture circuit, an action that has already shocked even his staunchest allies in the conservative part of the bench.
Yes, I know that Rehnquist, not Scalia, is the nominal Chief Justice. But Rehnquist, a cluelessly corrupt Nixon appointee, is lost without Scalia to put his partisan desires in the appropriate legal format. Scalia is the real Chief Justice, and controls the court with an iron fist: witness how quickly he moved to appease his Republican masters.
Here's what an outraged attorney acquaintance of mine has to say about Don Nino's horse's-head-in-the-bed ruling today:
A stay such as the one ordered by the USSC to stop the voting is only granted where "irreparable harm" will result absent the stay. A classic example is a stay of execution pending consideration of the appeal because if the defendant is executed before his appeal, and then his conviction is overturned, then the appellate victory would be meaningless to the innocent, but now dead man. That, my friends, is irreparable harm.
As Republican-appointed Justice Stevens correctly states in his dissenting opinion, there is no irreparable harm in allowing the recounts to continue. What is ironic however, is the irreparable harm that is caused to Gore by stopping the recount. If O'Connor changes her mind, for instance, and Gore wins, it would be impossible to recount the votes before the Dec. 18 deadline.
The only "irreparable harm" in allowing the recount will be to the ego of the Bush Campaign in discovering the true count of the Florida Vote. It's fine for Bush partisans to feel that way, but not the highest court in the land.
You gotta hand it to Don Nino, though: he just might have figured out a way to just run out the clock without having -- yet -- to issue a ruling that would totally trash everything for which he claims to stand. You know: state's rights, strict constructionism of the law, no 'legislating from the bench', that sort of thing. If he can just stall, stall, stall, and keep the count from happening, he and his GOP bosses win.
But what do they really win?
Is it a 'win' when it is obvious to EVERYONE watching that this victory was achieved by some of the shoddiest practice since Ford pardoned Nixon, in what was up until now the paramount example of Republicans taking care of their own? Is it a 'win' when everyone knows that in a fair recount, Bush and the GOP would lose?
And make no mistake about it: we will, unless the Republicans succeed in trashing the Freedom of Information Act, eventually know for sure that Gore did win Florida. The only question is whether or not we will be allowed to know in time to ensure that Gore gets what is rightfully his: The Presidency of the United States of America.