This is a very sad time and a time when our nation should be united. I believe that yet I can't help but feel that for the second time I'm helping Bush get out of trouble. After 9/11 we had to accept him as a legitimate president.
Should we have? Here's, Vincent Bugliosi, who was the lead prosecutor on the Charles Manson case, and not known for having "liberal" views. This was an article entitled None Dare Call it Treason, in The Nation,
In the December 12 ruling by the US Supreme Court handing the election to George Bush, the Court committed the unpardonable sin of being a knowing surrogate for the Republican Party instead of being an impartial arbiter of the law. If you doubt this, try to imagine Al Gore's and George Bush's roles being reversed and ask yourself if you can conceive of Justice Antonin Scalia and his four conservative brethren issuing an emergency order on December 9 stopping the counting of ballots (at a time when Gore's lead had shrunk to 154 votes) on the grounds that if it continued, Gore could suffer "irreparable harm," and then subsequently, on December 12, bequeathing the election to Gore on equal protection grounds. If you can, then I suppose you can also imagine seeing a man jumping away from his own shadow, Frenchmen no longer drinking wine.
Bugliosi then wrote a book called "The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President." Bugliosi spoke on Court TV about the book (advertised above.)
Let me just say before starting out, that if the Supreme Court in its December 12th decision had done the same thing for Al Gore that they did for George Bush, I can give you a 100% guarantee that I would have written the same identical book, "The Betrayal of America."
I had followed his career during the years since Manson and had read Helter Skelter (his book about it.) Vincent Bugliosi is Mr. Law & Order, and has a great love and respect for the law.
If I have any credibility with the American people, and I hope I do, I want to tell America to wake up to the fact that on December the 12th, five members of the United States Supreme Court committed one of the biggest and most serious crimes in American history when they stopped the recount in Florida, took the election away from the American people, and handed it to George Bush. Unbelievably, five Supreme Court justices, not the American people, chose our president. And because of what they did, I am very serious when I say that in a just and fair world these five justices belong behind prison bars, as much as any American white-collar criminal who ever lived. I'm very confident that any fair-minded person who reads my book "The Betrayal of America," will not only agree with me but be absolutely outraged at what these justices did.
Read Bugliosi's reasoning for believing that the five justices committed a serious crime.
How would event the best defense attorney in the country defend these five justices when they themselves, in so many words, confessed to their crime. How did they confess? They confessed by saying that their ruling that different standards to count votes violated the equal protection clause only applied to Bush v. Gore, not any other case. But if their ruling set forth a valid legal principle good enough for Bush v. Gore, why wouldn't it be good enough for other cases? This is the first time in the 210 year history of the court that the court limited its ruling to the case before it. This fact alone, and all by itself, clearly and unequivocally shows that these five justices were up to no good, that they knew their ruling was bogus and fraudulent and only a means to hand the election to George Bush. Because if their ruling was based on the law, there's no reason under the moon for them to have said that it only applies to Bush v. Gore. And in "The Betrayal of America," I point out that like typical criminals these five justices left their incriminating fingerprints everywhere. Speaking as a prosecutor, in my book, I believe I prove that beyond a reasonable doubt that these five justices deliberately set out to make sure that George Bush became president.
Almost five years has passed since the last election. 9/11 happened four years ago. We have had another disaster; this time a natural one.
Article comments
1 - D.C.
The politicizing by the left here is pathetic. You have to be totally driven by hatred to already be seeking a political angle to this tragedy. As for 9/11 - good thing you guys LOST! The American people looked up at their tv screens and saw the kooks supporting Kerry and said NO WAY!
2 - pia
Not hatred at all. Much much sadness. People don't have to hate to understand that life goes on, and we gave Bush a free pass after 9/11.
I love this country too much to see that again. It's not me who is fueled by hate, it's self serving, self safistified smug people on the right who didn't even make Rove step aside.
I learned from Bush and his supporters that we must be on the offensive at all times.
3 - Dave Nalle
All offense, all the time, but with no place to go, no positive ideas and with made up issues and bogus controversies to champion. Doesn't sound like how I'd like to live my life.
Dave
4 - pia
You see that's what I love about conservatives. Bogus issues: a needless war? A stolen election?
Have many positive ideas. health care? But affordable health care has never been a priority to this administion.
I work for myself. I pay as much money each month in premiums as some people pay in rent, and I feel good that I can afford to do that. But it doesn't include long term care. And many people can't afford to do what I do, or pay for COBRA after their job ends.
My friends who get health insurance through their jobs see their benefits being cut every year.
It's something we could change but we need the administration to help, and it's never been a priority to them
5 - Nancy
I happen to agree with the author. Too many times in his life Bush has gotten a free pass or had mumsy & poppy buy his way out of trouble. That the SC undermined the US constitution specifically for him is more than a scandal, it's a crime, as well as inflicting a legacy of scepticism & cynicism with almost half the population of this country that isn't going to go away in a hurry - at least not while the offending justices are still on this bench. Bush has dropped the ball, screwed up, failed, at every single thing he has ever done in his life. Now he's added running the US to that list. Unfortunately, it's us that are paying for it, and going to be paying for it, and our descendents who will continue to pay for it, for a long long time to come while Bush rides off to Crawford to live out the rest of his life in taxpayer- & consumer-subsidized comfort, ease, & overprivilege. At the very least, I want to see this inept bastard impeached for incompetence, if not outright fraud, lies, & violations of more statutes that I can shake a stick at, from elections on up. If it happens to fall on a GOP president, then maybe it's because it's the GOP that have been playing fast & loose w/the rights of US citizens, as well as their goofball Yalie-frat boy front man.
6 - D.C.
A free pass too many times? Must be Clinton. Sounds like its him that is being talked about.
7 - billy
yeah clinton got a free pass. he was impeached for lying about a blowjob. meanwhile bush diverts levee money to iraq and the republicans cry victim and beg us to be nice to the failure-in-chief.
8 - Natalie Davis
"After 9/11 we had to accept him as a legitimate president."
Perhaps you did, Mr. Bring It On. Not me.
No one needs to politicize anything -- everything is political. And bogus issues, Mr. Nalle? Perhaps from your vantage point; mileage varies.
9 - Dave Nalle
>>ou see that's what I love about conservatives. Bogus issues: a needless war? A stolen election?<<
You prove my point again. All you've got here is a pure partisan attack, because the evidence - you may have heard of evidence even if you prefer not to look at it - supports the need for the war and the fact that the election would have gone to Bush even without the intervention of the Supreme Court.
Dave
10 - One Monkey's Uncle
the evidence...supports the need for the war...
What evidence would that be, precisely? The Weapons of Mass Distraction, which were never found? The "strong ties" between Hussein and Bin Laden, enemies from two opposing branches of Islam who've had nothing to do with each other in years? Bringing "democracy" to Iraq, a nation whose constitution now calls for the establishment of another theocratic Islamic state, supported and welcomed by Iran? Just what IS the "evidence" that supports the indefensible, money-sucking, troop-massacring clusterfuck that is "Operation Iraqui Freedom" (or, whatever Karl's calling it these days)?
11 - Michael J. West
A free pass too many times? Must be Clinton. Sounds like its him that is being talked about.
This is a form of argument known as "changing the subject." It frequently occurs when a party to the discussion discovers that he/she has no logical or rational point to make within the framework of that discussion, therefore attempting to simultaneously win points AND avoid the issue at hand by turning to a new issue--one that had absolutely nothing to do with the current discussion.
12 - pia
Just how would the election have gone to Bush. Oh of course, hanging chads, Jews for Buchanan, turning registered Black voters away from the pole would have given Bush the election.
Heartwarming truly heartwarming.
The picture of Bush on the first page of The New York Times was the best argument for evolution I have seen, read or heard. Fit right in with my week.