...contact Bush.....freeper masterlist of addresses......GORE 50,140,140 VOTES (49%)...BUSH 49,782, 288 (48%)...CNN, 11/28/00
CNN reports, "The Florida Supreme Court issues a 6-1 opinion saying that its earlier decision on hand recounts that was sent back by the U.S. Supreme Court for clarification is based on state law." 12/11/00
"The forces of George W. Bush [have] succeed in obstructing the truth. Sadly, it's the U.S. Supreme Court that has signed up as Bush's transition team. In stopping this weekend's hand recount of the votes missed by Florida's counting machines, the court's five conservative justices have brought shame to their institution. Their ruling went outside tradition and law, as the four dissenting justices rightly pointed out. While Justice John Paul Stevens cites case after case on why the hand recounts should continue, Justice Antonin Scalia cites no law, only the notion that any act that calls into question the legitimacy of a Bush presidency should be stopped. Apparently any act includes counting votes missed by a machine. The hope that the court would rule on this debacle in a nonpartisan way have now been dashed. We looked to this court for a ruling affirming the rights of voters to have their ballots counted. We may still get that. But pardon us if we suspect the fix is in. 12/11/00
It's bad enough that Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia has one son whose law partner is arguing the Bush case before him, but now CNN reports that a second son, John Scalia, "accepted a position with the Miami-based firm Greenberg Traurig on November 7. The next day, Barry Richard, a partner in the firm, said he was called about representing Bush in Florida." Richard argued the Bush case before the Florida Supreme Court and Scalia has struck down that court's decision in the case. This is beginning to stink, particularly since the AP has reported that "federal law says judges should disqualify themselves from cases in which their child is known to have 'an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding." Applying the same criteria Scalia used to conclude that Bush would be "substantially affected" by the Florida vote count, it's clear that his sons would be "substantially affected" by Bush victories in the U.S. Supreme Court. It appears that Scalia, like Bush, believes that he is above the law. --Politex, 12/11/00
WARNING...WHILE EVERYONE SEEMS TO BE CONCENTRATING ON SCALIA'S POINT THAT CONTINUING THE HAND COUNT WOULD CAUSE HARM TO A FUTURE BUSH PRESIDENCY, THERE HAS BEEN LITTLE FOCUS UPON HIS SECOND POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS REASON, THAT FURTHER COUNTING THE ACTUAL BALLOTS WOULD DO PHYSICAL HARM TO THEM. LOOK FOR THIS TO BE THE RATIONALE BUSH AND HIS BACKERS USE TO TRY TO GET THE BALLOTS SEALED AWAY FROM THE SCRUTINY OF THE U.S. CITIZENS TO PREVENT KNOWLEDGE OF A GORE VICTORY IN FLORIDA. THE LAST TIME THIS HAPPENED WAS WHEN THE WARREN COURT SEALED AWAY THE EVIDENCE OF THE ASSASSINATION OF KENNEDY FROM THE EYES OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. NOW, THE SCALIA COURT IS MAKING READY TO SEAL AWAY THE EVIDENCE OF THEIR POLITICAL ASSASSINATION OF AL GORE FROM THE EYES OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. OBVIOUSLY, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE MUST ACT NOW, BEFORE BUSH AND HIS DEFENDERS INCREASE THE DRUMBEAT IN THE MEDIA TO HIDE THE EVIDENCE. IT'S TIME TO CONTACT YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE AS WELL AS YOUR LOCAL NEWSPAPER AND ANY OTHER RELEVANT MEDIA SOURCE YOU CAN THINK OF. DON'T DELAY. BUSH PARTISANS GOVERNOR WHITMAN, REPRESENTATIVE DUNN, AND NOW JUSTICE SCALIA HAVE ALREADY BEGUN THEIR DRUMBEAT TO SEAL THE BALLOTS FROM YOUR EYES. --Politex, 12/11/00
"In issuing an emergency order to halt the recount of Florida's ballots, the U.S. Supreme Court all but cleared the way for Texas Gov. George W. Bush to win the presidency. But by issuing the critical stay on a 5-4 vote strictly along ideological lines, the court simultaneously placed itself in the center of the partisan battling over the election, both liberal and conservative legal analysts said Saturday. The majority justices, in the words of Justice Antonin Scalia, said that continuing to count the ballots would cause "irreparable harm" to Bush--the standard for issuing an emergency stay of a lower court order--by "casting a cloud" over the legitimacy of his election. The minority, in a dissent written by Justice John Paul Stevens, said that "counting every legally cast vote cannot constitute irreparable harm." The real harm was being inflicted on Al Gore, Stevens suggested, because of the fast-approaching deadline for choosing Florida's electors. In the end, however, some legal scholars worried that the harm most damaging to the country may be suffered by the court itself.... Regardless of what follows, it may be too late now to complete the vote count before Tuesday, when disputes over electors are supposed to end.
"The Supreme Court has made it absolutely impossible for Florida to complete the recount" in the time frame prescribed by the Electoral Count Act of 1887, said Pamela Karlan, a professor of law at Stanford University who clerked for the late Justice Harry A. Blackmun. "It's pretty close to game, set and match." Because of those time constraints, Saturday's ruling, while technically only a stay, was "functionally a ruling on the merits for Bush, paving the way for him to become president," said USC constitutional law professor Erwin Chemerinsky. But the problem for Bush--and potentially for the court, as well--is that the "legitimacy" of Bush's victory will remain in doubt as long as the ballots remain uncounted in Florida, said University of Utah law professor Michael McConnell, who served as a Justice Department and White House lawyer under Ronald Reagan."The reputation of both Bush and the court could suffer further if academics or news organizations eventually count the disputed votes--something that Florida's open records laws makes quite likely--and discover that they favor Gore, he and others noted. "I suppose the logic of it is that the court should say they should burn all the ballots," McConnell said sarcastically....
"This year's postelection battle has blurred the lines between law and politics.... "Perhaps the biggest irony is the fact that a man who says he is a uniter, not a divider, may become president by dividing every conceivable institution in America--the populace, the Florida Legislature, the Florida Supreme Court and now the U.S. Supreme Court," said Yale Law School professor Akhil Reed Amar, author of a book on the Bill of Rights. "The bonds of union are being snapped," he said. "This did not have to happen." One prominent historian of the court went so far as to compare the ruling with the case that is almost universally considered the Supreme Court's lowest moment--the 1857 ruling that helped spark the Civil War by holding that Congress could take no action to restrict slavery in U.S. territories. "The question is will this be another self-inflicted wound--like Dred Scott, where the court thought it could solve a political problem and didn't," said Stanford University history professor Jack Rakove, whose book on the court, "Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution," won the Pulitzer Prize. 'This is the logical conclusion of the legalization of political conflict," Rakove said. "The boundaries of what is legal and what is political have now become completely impermeable.'" --L.A. TIMES, 12/11/00
The U.S. Supreme Court "appears ready to install a President who did not win the election. Can this really be happening? Everyone knows that if the votes are ever counted in Florida, Gore is the winner. George W. Bush knows that more than anyone -- that's why he's fighting so desperately hard to stop that count from ever taking place. If he felt he was truly the winner, his attitude would be, "Sure, go ahead and count the ballots, I'm not worried 'cause I know I'm the winner." But that's NOT what he thinks or knows. He knows he lost. EVERYONE knows he lost. Let's cut the B.S. If those 12,000 ballots ever get counted, George W. Bush is the loser and everyone with an I.Q. of over 70 knows it. Why would the loser insist on being given the top prize? Have you ever heard of such a thing? Not only that, he has convinced all the loser-lovers in the Florida legislature and the U. S. House of Representatives to grant him the victory in case he loses -- again -- in court.
"In every other nation on this planet, they have a word for this behavior -- and that word is "coup." George W. Bush and his allies in Congress, the Florida legislature, and the U.S. Supreme Court are trying to stage a coup, an overthrow of the will of the people. According to last Sunday's stunning front page story in the Miami Herald, had there been no shenanigans in the Florida election, the Herald calculates that Gore would have won Florida by 23,000 votes! The theft of this election didn't just start with Jeb Bush's girlfriend/Bush for President Co-Chairwoman/Bush delegate to the Republican Convention/Secretary of State Katherine Harris's refusal to count the ballots. Months ago, Jeb and Katherine sought to eliminate as many black voters as possible from the voting rolls. This is a mind-blowing story and I encourage you to read it.
"The U.S. Supreme Court stopped the counting of the ballots this weekend and violated the law in doing so. They are allowed to grant a stay only if "irrevocable, irreparable harm" would happen if the votes were counted. Since when does the counting of our citizens' votes cause "irreparable harm"? Justice Antonin Scalia said (I'll paraphrase here), well, we believe Bush won and if we allow those votes from Florida to be counted and Gore ends up ahead, well, that would cause irreparable harm to a Bush administration. Yes, that is what he said! ...I don't like liars, I don't like thieves, and I really hate cowards. Mr. Bush (that's what the majority of Americans will always call you, because we will not participate in your lie by ever calling you "Mr. President") -- we know what you are so afraid of. You are a coward for not wanting those ballots counted because you know the outcome. You know you've lost. You know the people have spoken." --Michael Moore, 12/11/00
"Virtually drowned out by Saturday's explosive Supreme Court order, which halted all Florida ballot counts, was an Atlanta-based federal court ruling that sided with Vice President Gore's request to let the manual recounts continue. Only minutes before the Supreme Court issued its stay, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals published a ruling that Gore lawyers had sought. Let the ballot recounts continue in dozens of Florida counties, the appellate court said, but don't officially tally the results until the Supreme Court can rule on the constitutionality of the overall recount process. In short, the 12-judge appeals court disagreed with Texas Gov. George W. Bush's claim that he would suffer "irreparable harm" if the recounts continued. The Supreme Court, voting 5 to 4, took the opposite view, immediately stopping the recounts that are central to Gore's hopes of erasing Bush's slim lead. In an 8 to 4 vote, the court refused to halt the recounts, saying they wouldn't impose irreparable harm on Bush even though the broader constitutional questions remained unresolved. Then, in a unanimous vote, the federal court ruled that "in order to ensure that the United States Supreme Court has sufficient time to rule" on whether to grant Bush's request for an injunction, Florida election officials are prohibited from changing "any previously certified results of the presidential election based upon any manual recounts after the existing certification. Nothing in this order should be construed to prevent, obstruct or impede the continuation of the manual recounts that are currently being conducted." --Washington Post, 12/11/00
"A former Clinton White House counsel suggested Sunday that conservative Justice Antonin Scalia may want to recuse himself from the Florida recount case because his son works for a firm that represents George W. Bush. Eugene Scalia is a partner in the Washington office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Ted Olson, also a partner there, will represent Bush for a second time in oral arguments on Monday, when the Supreme Court considers whether to allow hand counting of ballots in Florida to resume. "Under that circumstance, Justice Scalia at the very least should disclose the relationship, the presence of his son in Ted Olson's law firm, and explain why recusal, at least for appearances' sake, isn't desirable," said Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Clinton....Scalia did not recuse himself the first time Olson argued this case, so it seemed unlikely he would do so this time. On Saturday, Scalia joined in the 5-4 majority in temporarily halting hand counting of ballots in Florida, as ordered by the Florida Supreme Court. And he issued his own opinion explaining in stronger terms why he believes Bush is likely to win his case after it is heard Monday. In September, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, whose lawyer son is helping defend Microsoft against private antitrust lawsuits, participated in a key Supreme Court vote in a Microsoft antitrust case. He explained in writing that he had reviewed the law and concluded there was no conflict of interest.Federal law says judges should disqualify themselves from cases in which their child is known to have 'an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.'" --AP, 12/10/00 WANT TO DO SOMETHING? In fascist countries, when the votes, the will of the people, go against the newly-elected dictator, one of the first things the dictator does is to destroy the evidence or at least prevent the citizens from looking at the evidence. If you think this could not happen in the United States, think again. Although Florida has laws that provide access to the ballots after the election, Republican Governor Whitman of New Jersey has already proposed in public that the Florida votes be sealed for an undetermined period of time. This would prevent citizens from looking at the ballots and, say, counting them to see who really won the 2000 presidential elections. In the days to come, more Bush backers will propose sealing those votes from the people. In the days to come, steps should be taken to insure that those votes are neither lost nor destroyed. If you believe the Florida votes should remain safe and open to scrutiny by U.S. citizens, as the law indicates, you might want to let your elected officials know it. --Politex, 12/10/00
Craig Waters, spokesman for the Florida Supreme Court, has announced that the Scalia Supreme Court has not requested that the 12,000 Florida contested ballots be sent to Washington nor is that being done. They will remain in the posession of the Florida Supreme Court for now. All of the other papers regarding the recent Florida directive to begin counting the undervotes have been sent to the Scalia Supreme Court. The question of the safty and availability of the ballots as noted above remains. For example, on yesterday's "Capitol Gang" Republican U.S. Rep. Jennifer Dunn endorsed Governor Whitman's idea of sealing the ballots to prevent inspection by American citizens. --Politex, 2 p.m. ET, 12/10/00
This previous report was in error...
"TALLAHASSEE, Fla.--The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered that more than 12,000 Florida ballots contested by Al Gore be sent to Washington along with other legal papers in the case of Bush vs. Gore.... Bush lawyer Phil Beck said that "it's routine for [the Supreme Court] to get all the exhibits and it so happens that in this case the ballots from these cases are exhibits."... Gore lawyer Laurence Tribe, however, saw the request for the ballots as hardly typical. He said he had heard a Florida Supreme Court clerk joking with a counterpart at the U.S. Supreme Court about the possibility of taking the ballots off of Florida's weary hands. But he was surprised to learn that such an order actually had been issued.
"Mr. Tribe, a professor at Harvard Law School, said that while he "wouldn't ordinarily speculate" about the future of the ballots should the U.S. high court reverse the Florida court, "the opinion of Justice [Antonin] Scalia invites it." Five justices, including Justice Scalia, ordered the counts stopped, at least until the high court hears arguments on Monday. In a separate opinion only he signed, Justice Scalia said that counting the votes threatens "irreparable harm to [Mr. Bush], and the country, by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election."
"Given that, Mr. Tribe said, "you wouldn't have to call it too elaborate a conspiracy theory if the court were to conclude that no legitimate purpose can be served by counting them" -- ever. That would prevent any future embarrassment to a possible Bush presidency should a later count show that Mr. Gore got more votes. "It does seem to be the view of five members of the court that there's something illegitimate about counting them," Mr. Tribe said, and those justices may wish to head off "the specter of having them counted after the inauguration by some doctoral candidate from Michigan State armed with a Freedom of Information request." today's Wall Street Journal, 12/10/00
Antonin Scalia, one of George W. Bush’s professed legal heroes..., in a rare rebuke of his dissenting colleagues from the bench, wrote, “Count first, and rule upon legality afterwards, is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires.” How’s that for a first-class entry into the Hall of Fame of Orwellian doublespeak? This from a set of right-wing justices who profess a philosophical opposition to judicial activism. Never in the past hundred years has any federal court asserted itself into a state election law in this manner. And now, the court’s strategem will smooth a path toward a Bush victory no matter how it rules....
It’s hard to exaggerate just how badly this decision damages the potential legitimacy of a Bush presidency. Using the power of the federal judiciary to overturn state law is bad enough for any conservative candidate who professes to value local control over the encroachment of Washington. But what would we say about another nation’s election process if it rested on the political machinations of justices appointed by the candidate's father and his father’s running mate, coupled with a state legislature overseen by his brother? Now imagine that this same candidate lost the nationwide popular vote and appeared, at the time of the court ruling, to be on his way to losing the state vote as well. Calling such a country a “Banana Republic” would be unfair to both bananas and republics.We would say, at the very least, that this is an illegitimate leader whose democratic credentials to speak for his nation are tarnished beyond repair....
The sad truth is that genuine democracy is most easily lost when we pay tribute to its trappings as we disregard its substance. George Bush lost the popular vote and looked to be on his way to losing the Electoral College as well. With the intervention of the court, Bush and company may succeed in short-circuiting the counting process sufficiently to get himself in the back door of the Oval Office. But his presidency will forever be tainted in the eyes of those who believe democracy entails more than just finding a way — any way — to keep the other guy’s votes from mattering in the final count. --Eric Alterman, 12/10/00
LEAVING LITTLE DOUBT THAT THE MAJORITY OF THE MEMBERS OF THE U.S. SUPREME COURT, ALL REPUBLICANS AND MOST APPOINTED BY REAGAN AND BUSH'S FATHER, HAVE POLITICIZED THE WORKINGS OF THE HIGHEST COURT IN THE LAND, THE SCALIA-LED MAJORITY HAVE SHUT DOWN THE FLORIDA VOTE COUNT. WHILE THE SUPREME COURT WILL TAKE UP THE BUSH APPEAL ON MONDAY AT 11, THE EFFECT OF THEIR IMMEDIATE, SPLIT-DECISION INJUNCTION IS TO PREVENT THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE FROM BEING EXPRESSED THROUGH THE VOTES THAT REMAIN TO BE COUNTED, THEREBY PARTICIPATING IN THE SLOW-DOWN TACTICS THAT HAVE MARKED THE BUSH STRATEGY FROM DAY ONE. THERE WAS NO GOOD REASON TO STOP THE VOTE COUNT PRIOR TO 11 ON MONDAY, SINCE FINISHING THE VOTE COUNT WOULD DO NO HARM TO BUSH'S CASE. HOWEVER, IF GORE WERE WINNING AT THAT POINT, THE PEOPLE WOULD KNOW IT, PLACING GREATER PRESSURE UPON THE MAJORITY WHICH IS OBVIOUSLY POLITICIZED IN BUSH'S FAVOR. AS IT STANDS, THEY CAN PLAY OUT THE CLOCK, MAKING THE COUNT AN IMPOSSIBILITY BETWEEN NOW AND DECEMBER 12, OR DECIDE FOR BUSH WITHOUT DOING SO IN THE FACE OF AN ACTUAL GORE VICTORY. RATHER THAN HELPING TO UNIFY THE NATION AS IT SHOULD DO, THE DECISION OF THE POLITICIZED SUPREME COURT FURTHER SPLITS OUR COUNTRY INTO TWO CAMPS AND ULTIMATELY INCREASES THE RAPIDLY GROWING REALIZATION THAT A BUSH ADMINISTRATION WILL BE ILLEGITIMATE, THEREBY SETTING THE STAGE FOR FOUR YEARS OF ENDLESS POLITICAL LITIGATION AND LEGISLATIVE DEADLOCK. --Politex, 12/9/00
Note...Scalia, a Reagan appointee and strict constructionist who believes that the U.S. Congress should have legal oversight over the U.S. Supreme Court, should recuse himself from any decisions involving George W. Bush because his son works in Bush's law firm... Eugene Scalia, Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Washington, D.C., (202) 955-8206, escalia@gibsondunn.com
"Scalia's impact has been on the way the court approaches constitutional law itself. By adhering to methods he calls "originalism" and "textualism."...
Scalia has prompted the justices to be more self-conscious about how they interpret law. Rather than following judicial interpretation of law, originalists go
directly to the source - to the language of the Constitution of 1791, or to the post-Civil War 14th Amendment in 1868 that forbade discrimination....Before the mid-1980s, the justices did not often hang their decisions on a theoretical legal framework. "Before
Scalia, until the late '80s, the justices would issue a ruling and say, 'Here is why our opinion makes sense,' and
then support it with some law and history," says Mark Tushnet of the Georgetown University Law School and
a former clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall. "But now everyone is much more conscious about looking at
what the text [of the Constitution] says - and quite often less conscious about how that might fit into a social or
practical context."...
"Scalia's critics are diverse and numerous. Their basic complaint is that his originalist ideas tend to freeze the Constitution
in time rather than allow it to speak to contemporary needs. Scalia himself has referred to the founding document as "a
statue."... "Scalia seems to feel that original interpretation is everything," says Georgetown University's Dr. Tushnet. "He exalts text and history above practical issues,
like how a ruling affects the machinery of government in the real world. That's a concern he doesn't seem to have."
Some Scalia critics also see inconsistencies in the justice's application of originalism. When it comes to abortion, which
he opposes, Scalia is among the first to note that there's nothing in the Constitution explicitly supporting that right. Yet
when it comes to states' rights, which he has sought to broaden, Scalia treats the 10th Amendment as if it gives states
power to ignore congressional requests to comply with federal regulations - even though the Constitution gives no
affirmative rights to states, critics say...."States' rights, executive privilege, qualified immunity, all the things Scalia seems to support, are part and parcel of the
judge-made law he says he doesn't agree with," gripes a constitutional lawyer who has a case before the court." --Christian Science Monitor, 3/3/98
"Generally, the justices align like this: Thomas and Scalia anchor the conservative wing and are often joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen G. Breyer typically vote together as the liberal-moderate bloc, and are frequently joined by Justice David H. Souter. The centrist conservatives who tend to tip the balance are Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy...because three of the nine are 70 or older (John Paul Stevens is 80) and none has retired for six years, the odds are high that either Al Gore or George W. Bush will have the opportunity to appoint one or more justices and reshape the court for years to come....
"[Bush] has told Republicans that they can rest assured he will appoint justices who 'will strictly interpret the Constitution' and model themselves after conservative Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas....
''If we get another Scalia or Thomas, we are courting disaster,'' said Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, a liberal civil rights group that will hold debates and town meetings this fall to raise awareness of the Supreme Court. ''We are just one election away, and one or two new justices away, from the civil and constitutional rights we take for granted being eroded or eliminated overnight.'" --Boston Globe, 6/11/00
Obviously, Bush would want to use Scalia as his Theocratic point-man to support his religious agenda. (see here and here) As Robert Marquand delicately put it in the CSM story quoted above, "Scalia is a devout Roman Catholic, which some court observers say informs, at least in part, some of his views. [Perhaps Scalia's strong religious convictions account for his use of the Constitution in the same way that Christian literalists use the Bible, although he has yet to declare that the Constitution is the word of God. At the same time, Scalia wants to conveniently consider the Constitution fallible when he needs to contradict its "teachings" for his own political purposes. --Politex] The Scalias worship at a suburban Virginia
church known for its orthodox-minded congregation, one that recently erected a monument to unborn children.
In 1996, when the high court had accepted two important "right to die" cases dealing with the practice of euthanasia,
Scalia came under fire for giving a speech - while the case was still before the court - in which he said there is "no
constitutional right to die."
A year earlier, in a speech at the Mississippi College of Law, Scalia waded into the conservative side of the culture wars
over religion in the public arena, coming out for a greater presence of religion and infuriating church-state separationists.
He attacked "elites" and others whom he sees as hostile to faith, stating, "We must pray for the courage to endure the
scorn of the sophisticated world." (see further)
When Bush referred to Scalia during one of the nationally-televised debates as his favorite Supreme Court judge and the kind he would nominate during his presidential tenure, he sent a message loud and clear to his Theocratic backers of vouchers for religious schools, government-supported religious chartered schools, and government-supported welfare through religious "faith-based institutions that he had a plan to join with them in their Theocratic quest. Like Scalia, he is prefectly willing to erect a philosophic Trojan horse to push his religious beliefs into a nation that has, rightfully, tried to keep Church and State separated since its beginnings. Unlike those who believe Bush is just being naive, we're afraid he knows exactly what he's doing. During a visit to a "faith-based" welfare institution in 1999, "Bush suggested that a program's roots in a church, synagogue or mosque should not disqualify it from public money, even if religious obligations are imposed on those it helps." (AAS, 8/28/99) Somehow we think Scalia would be inclined to agree, although it inconveniently is contradicted by his supposed philosophy of "originalism." --Politex, 6/11/00
George W. Bush "has ended idiocy as we know it. His is an altogether new idiocy. A militant, proud, smarmy, arrogant, grating, sunburnt, craggy-faced, twangy-voiced idiocy that yammers and babbles and juts out its jaw and aspires to the level of platitudes.
No matter how many people capable of thought he surrounds his tiny cranium with when reading speeches, as I scan the podium, I can still, like the old Monty Python sketch, "Spot The Looney."...Strict constructionist is a term currently being spat out by W. for what constitutes his ideal [Supreme Court] nominee. The term strict constructionist refers to any jurist who prefers precedent to justice....Republicans...try to select judges who embody their party's core values. Namely, young, vigorous idealogues (Clarence Thomas) or lunatics with hearts full of hate (Robert Bork)...[Bush's ideal judge,] Antonin Scalia...defines judicial activism as anything that's occurred since Draco ruled Athens."
--Jerry Long, Philadelphia Inquirer, 6/11/00
BUSH WATCH: THE NOVELby Jerry Politex
I drove my silver Audi down Mesa Drive, the spine of Cat Mountain, hung a left at the cat's tail, drove quickly up the hilly, winding 2222 in low gear, took a right onto Balcones Drive, and came to a stop in the rear parking lot of Che Zee.
Another sunny, warm early spring day in Northwest Austin, Texas. The lunch crowd was pretty much thinned out by now, so I had choices of parking spaces. I got out of the car, the turbines winding down, and stood by the rear entrance to the restaurant, a pretty-good place for not very expensive Southwestern food. I didn't have long to wait.
He came into the parking lot in an old, rattletrap Nissan pickup. Paint worn off in places, rusty, dusty, squeaky. I recognized him from the description the moment he got out. Looked to be in his fifties. Grizzled. Kind of rusty, dusty, and squeaky. A stringbean of a guy with pale white skin, reddish hair, which was short but unkempt. He was wearing a black polo shirt with the tail out. Denim shorts that had shrunk to a tight fit over his bony hips, short enough for the front pockets to stick out of the frayed cuffs. A pair of old, once-white but now gray, paint-spattered tennis sneakers. Austin casual for a yuppie restaurant, ten minutes from the glass buildings of the city's burgeoning silicon gulch , a world of high tech hopes in buildings springing up like overnight mushrooms.
"Name's Wayne," he said with a crooked, good-natured smile, coming across the parking lot with his arm outstreatched like a spear, eager to shake my hand. "Recognized you right away, Politex. Good description."
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