By Nicholas Stix
November 29, 2000
Toogood Reports
On Thanksgiving Day, I gave thanks for being blessed with my beautiful wife, and our son, whom the stork had brought nine months earlier.
Thanksgiving brought a call from my ailing Mom, who couldn’t leave the house. Naturally, we argued about The Election That Wouldn’t Die.
Mom, whom I recently accused of being a communist, argued that it was a matter of “justice,” that Al Gore must win. Is our family name “Stix” or “Jackson”?
Of course, in our family, Mom’s a moderate. My sister, a lawyer, is a hardcore Clintonista; Mom’s older sister, Aunt Ruth, a retired public school teacher, is an unrepentant Stalinist. Far from being chastened by the reports of Soviet gulags and mass murder, Aunt Ruth and our late Uncle Frank pointed out that that’s what it takes to protect the Revolution.
A couple of days later, I read Peggy Noonan’s Wall Street Journal op-ed on the stealing of the election to Mom over the telephone. My mother responded to the charges Noonan catalogued, “I don’t believe it!”
I noted that the most controversial charges against Democratic Florida election officials—chadbanging, etc.—were supported by eyewitness affidavits, and the other, less controversial charges (e.g., cheating the military out of their votes) were not even being disputed. I emphasized, as well, that the Gore team never challenged any absentee ballots from Israel, and that military votes had not been challenged in the past.
I mentioned the mathematicians who had calculated the chances at something like 500 million-to-one, that Al Gore would get so many “new” votes through hand recounting. There are millions of families like mine—in Goreworld.
On Election Day 20, aka Sunday, November 26th, Judge Charles Burton, the chairman of the Palm Beach County election canvassing board, asked Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris for yet another extension to continue hand-counting ballots, beyond the illegal one of 5 p.m., November 26th, already granted him by the Florida Supreme Court on November 21, in violation of Secretary Harris’ legal authority.
Judge Burton wanted his people to be able to commit undemocratic acts with ballots until 9 a.m. the following morning.
But if Secretary Harris’ “discretion” to refuse to extend the state deadline had already been nullified, why would she still have the discretion to extend the deadline? But of course—discretion obtains only “to help the Good Guys.”
That’s the way things work—in Goreworld.
So that we’re clear: The Democrats are “the Good Guys.” Their opponents—not all of whom are Republicans—are “the Bad Guys.” Got it?
Judge Burton’s request for a second extension was another way of saying, ‘My people have not been able to fabricate votes quickly enough.’
According to a November 26th CNN report, Florida Sen. Bob Graham also threw his dimple on the ballot pile: “Graham said extending the deadline for Palm Beach County ‘would have been an act that would have bled off some of the poison that has affected this process.’” Says the rattlesnake.
The line, “would have bled off some of the poison,” reminds me of the joke about the kid who, after murdering his parents, tells the judge, “As a poor orphan, I throw myself upon the mercy of the court.”
Apparently Judge Roberts and Sen. Graham—joined by Florida Sen.-elect Bill Nelson—thought that the judicial rape Secretary Harris suffered at the hands of the Florida Supreme Court would suffice to put her in her place, and that thus chastened, she would let them have their way with her. And if the FSC hadn’t completed the job, the media gang bang would have. The latter group included a Washington Post writer, Robin Givhan, who as much as said, ‘She deserved it,’ based on Secretary Harris’ choice of make-up.
They were wrong.
Bloodied but unbowed, Secretary Harris just said, “No.”
And later that same day, she said, “Yes.”
“Yes,” as in, “I hereby declare Gov. George W. Bush the winner of Florida’s 25 electoral votes for the president of the United States.”
Katherine Harris, American hero; Katherine Harris, Bad Guy.
Back in Goreworld, the “Sore Loserman” team, and its supporters, remain defiant. Sen. Joseph Lieberman announced,
This evening, the secretary of state of Florida has decided to certify what by any reasonable standard is an incomplete and inaccurate count of the votes cast in Florida.... What is at issue here is nothing less than every American’s simple, sacred right to vote. How can we teach our children that every vote counts, if we are not willing to make a good faith effort to count every vote?
Amen, brother!
And the next day, and the day after that, Al Gore reiterated to the American people his refusal to concede the election. We can expect more of the same today. And tomorrow. There’s something gripping about watching two men go down in flames. There’s a certain logic to Al Gore and Joe Lieberman’s refusal to concede. Because if these men are ruled the losers, they are finished in American public life. And I’m not talking, The Rosie O’Donnell Show. (If I should be proved wrong, so much the worse for American public life!)
Someday, Tipper will no doubt break in every nurse she employs to care for her husband with, “And remember, you must always address him as ‘Mr. President.’”
Oh sure, Lieberman covered his kishkas, by simultaneously running for vice-president and senator, and won the latter election in a walk, but he’s finished, too. Hence, Gore and Lieberman have nothing to lose, by fighting on.
They are not alone in their fight.
Bill Clinton has refused to permit the Bush transition team to use office space in the White House, there are Gore lawsuits pending, and Democrats have in recent days grown increasingly loyal towards a man whom they supposedly dislike and distrust.
Just the day before Secretary Harris certified Pres. Bush’s victory, Democrats “manually recounted” quotes from the Miami-Dade election supervisor, David Leahy, in which they claimed to see “dimples.”
Leahy, like the other members of the canvassing board—none of whom complained of intimidation—a Democrat, had made a statement recognizing and respecting Republican voters’ protests when, in violation of Florida election law, the Miami-Dade recounting was moved from a public room with witnesses from the Republican Party and the general public, to a private one with neither.
In “recounting” David Leahy’s statement in support of the protesters, Democrats turned it into a condemnation of Republicans’ alleged use of “intimidation,” “rioters,” and “mob violence” to stop the recounting, which was in fact halted, when it became clear that the new deadline could not be met.
One of New York’s many socialist congressmen, Jerrold Nadler, called the peaceful Republican demonstrators “rioters.” According to the November 26th Los Angeles Times, Nadler charged that the Miami-Dade canvassing board “succumbed to the mob violence and intimidation.”
“Rioters”? “Mob violence”? These are odd locutions for a man who sees in murderous black, Hispanic or Arab rioters, only “demonstrators.”
According to the L.A. Times’ Mike Clary, Leahy reported seeing “‘a noisy, peaceful protest. These were individuals who were downstairs as observers, and they were unhappy with the board’s decision [to move],’ Leahy said. ‘To me, that was understandable, and the news media had the same concern. They protested as well. No matter—a group of Democratic congressmen, including Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings, the only federal judge ever to be impeached and removed from office for corruption, called for a Department of Justice investigation, and Miami Rep. Carrie Meek “called for Leahy’s resignation.”
One of the marks of the contemporary scoundrel, is the call for a Justice Department investigation.
The L.A. Times’ Mike Clary is careful to speak of “the disturbance,” the same word used by the mainstream media to describe the bloody, 1992 Los Angeles race riots.
In New York, echoing Rep. Jerrold Nadler & Co. in its November 27th lead editorial, the Democratic-centrist Daily News threw all good sense to the wind:
The rights of the citizens who voted for him [Gore] have been trampled. If Harris’ certification is allowed to stand, mob intimidation and ballot chicanery will have put the stamp of larceny on the outcome. That must be redressed.
What happened in Miami-Dade County was an outrage against the democratic process. The county canvassing board first started a legal hand count, but then stopped when confronted by GOP thugs, leaving 10,000 ballots uncounted. This overt violence cannot be compared with the lawful actions of Democratic protesters, whose actions did not interfere with any official proceedings. Similarly, in Florida’s GOP-dominated Nassau County, officials threw out the legal, official recount and certified old numbers that favored Bush. And in Palm Beach County, officials were not granted the time allotted by the state’s top court to finish their hand count. Instead, they submitted a partial count, which Harris discarded.
What “overt violence”? What “uncounted ballots”? All of Miami-Dade’s ballots were counted at least twice.
And note the sleight of hand, in turning Secretary Harris’ refusal to extend the certification deadline a second time into a refusal to “grant the time allotted by the state’s top court to finish their hand count.”
If the above sentence were true, we would expect to have already heard from the Florida Supreme Court, and about now, Florida lawmen would be coming to arrest Katharine Harris.
And at the New York Times, Maureen Dowd refers to the man who LOST Florida as the “President-elect.”
Meanwhile, Al Gore’s lawyer, David Boies, is suing Miami-Dade, Nassau, and Palm Beach counties.
Boies is suing Miami-Dade and Nassau counties to force election officials to complete manual recounts. Based on the impossibility of meeting the hand-count deadline, those counties’ election officials had reverted to the original, machine vote counts.
Boies is suing Palm Beach County, in order to force its election officials to use the same voodoo voting principle of “one dimple, one vote” embraced by Goreworld’s Broward County, where Gore supporters were able to counterfeit over 300 new “Gore votes.”
Sorry—I owe an apology to legitimate counterfeiters everywhere.
Broward County officials had decreed that if a voter had applied the slightest pressure on or in the vicinity of the chad by the name of a presidential candidate (read: Gore), despite having clearly punctured a chad in every other race, the “dimpled chad” counts as a Gore vote.
Conversely, Palm Beach County officials only counted dimpled or “pregnant” chads as votes if the ballot was that of a clearly promiscuous voter whose stylus had left dimples in other races, as well.
Some of the Vice-President’s critics have complained repeatedly of Democrats’ “ends justify the means” mentality.
If nothing else, the crisis permits me to clear up this bit of confusion. I believe it is the German philosopher, University of Munich Prof. Robert Spaemann, who has argued, contrary to the adage, that the ends most certainly DO justify the means—for if they don’t, what does?
Not that Spaemann is a relativist or nihilist; far from it. A follower of the mediaeval Christian philosopher, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Spaemann would require that one’s ends be just.
Vice-President Al Gore’s end is to become President, election or no. Thus far, he has used “appropriate” means towards that end.
The Democrats’ end is to install a one-party dictatorship. Thus far, they have used “appropriate” means towards that end.
Pres.-elect George Bush’s lawyers had sought and received a writ of “certiorari” from the U.S. Supreme Court. That means that the Court agreed to fast-track the Governor’s petition for appeal, to argue that Florida election law, and voters’ right to equal protection under the law, under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, were both violated.
Yesterday, the parties submitted legal briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court; tomorrow, they will submit rebuttals; and on Friday, December 1st—aka Election Day 25—the U.S. Supreme Court will sit to hear arguments as to whether—or how—it should choose our new President.
If Secretary Harris’ certification of the Florida vote is permitted to stand, Pres. Bush’s U.S. Supreme Court case will be rendered moot.
One of Vice-President Gore’s helpers, Stanford Law Prof. Pam Karlan, has argued that once the state has decided, the federal bench has nothing to say: “Once a state court rules on election matters, that’s it.”
The journalist who quoted Prof. Karlan in the November 25th Daily News, William Sherman, neglected to mention that until now, Pam Karlan had dedicated her career, as a “voting rights” specialist and former NAACP counsel, to the federal overturning of state election laws.
But Pam Karlan’s means and ends are in perfect harmony. In working towards the end of installing a racial-socialist dictatorship, it is perfectly acceptable to hold states’ rights in contempt, and then, without a word of explanation, suddenly become a virulent states’ rightist. Whatever’s expedient. Or as they say in Goreworld, “just.”
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