The much-maligned Supreme Court decision came down, crushing the dreams of those of us whose hearts raced at the legal arguments that took the sound-bite form "count all the votes" and rankled at the other side's sound bite: "the votes have been counted... they've been counted and recounted."
Oh! How I wish I'd been blogging then. There were such interesting details every step of the way. Legal angles that could have been explained and examined. The reporting on the TV news was so biased and stupid. Things would have played out a lot differently if there had been legal bloggers picking through the fast-accumulating wreckage hour by hour. Instead we got those TV sound bites.
Have you noticed that you don't hear about "sound bites" — "5-second sound bites" — anymore? There's "viral video" now. Viral video and internet memes... and bloggers to call bullshit on mainstream media.
Ah, but what fun it would have been to have been calling the bullshit in the late autumn of the year 2000.
Yes, it's also the 10-year anniversary of the big Florida recount. I wish I'd been blogging then! It would have been so much fun to write about that every step of the way. I'd have liked to show you in real time that I really wanted my guy, Al Gore, to win, and I also accepted nearly everything the Supreme Court did in the complicated litigation over the recount. But there are so many missed blogging opportunities in the past. I'd have loved to have blogged the Clinton scandals too. And the Clarence Thomas hearings. The Bork hearings.
As if things couldn't get any weirder, did you notice the name of the lawyer who made the Republicans' unsuccessful arguments before that federal judge today? That would be Ted Olson, a man Washingtonians often refer to as a 'Washington super-lawyer.' Who is Ted Olson? Well, that would be the same one knee-deep in the Arkansas Project, which in league with the American Spectator spent a ton of money digging dirt on Bill Clinton in Arkansas....
Well, now, isn't that weird? I just blogged this morning about that Think Progress blogger who confronted Justice Alito and he was going on about the Arkansas Project:
Last night, the American Spectator — a right-wing magazine known for its role in the “Arkansas Project,” a well-funded effort to invent stories with the goal of eventually impeaching President Clinton — held its annual gala fundraising event....
That first TPM post wove Justice Scalia into its conspiracy-ish riff:
Of course, Olson... is also the Olson from Morrison v. Olson, the supreme court case which upheld the constitutinality of the Independent Counsel statute. Olson was against it. Come to think of it, we Dems now think he and Scalia were right. So maybe chalk one up in his favor.
So that's how TPM first talked about law. Yikes. Spelled "constitutionality" wrong too.
I'm going to start reading the lefty blogs more and writing about them, I think. I'm interested in the way they string ideas together, and I think they need some more push back.
Lt. Gov. Craig Campbell, who oversees Alaska elections, has indicated that he will accept minor misspellings of Murkowski's name as long as the "voter intent" is clear.
Intent of the voter. Ah! That brings back delightful memories of the Bush v. Gore recount.
Miller is overdoing it. Clearly, they've got to count stuff like "Murakowski" and "Murkowsky" and "Murcowski" and even "Mercowsky." But where's the line? What about "Merssky"? Or "Murk."? What about "Lisa"? That's dimpled chad territory, no?
