Word: stated
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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Constitutional crisis in Florida. Oh, the hand wringing at the prospect of the Florida legislature challenging the state supreme court's decision in Gore vs. Bush. Constitutional crisis? Why not? It's about time...
Imagine if a cousin of Al Gore's had called Florida for Gore on election night. Imagine if a Democratic secretary of state were determined to use her legendary "discretion" to shut off recounts while her man was ahead. Think what the Bush team could do with material like that. But they've done remarkably well with much thinner gruel...
...justices then denounce Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris for "imposing an arbitrary seven-day deadline." They then proceed, without irony, to impose their own arbitrary five-day deadline. (Hers, unlike theirs, was not arbitrary but statutory...
This central contradiction alone--elevating recounts in Democratic counties to high principle while ignoring recounts in the rest of the state--renders the court's ruling a travesty. A welcome travesty, however. Because this time the lawless lawmaking was made in the full glare of publicity and with such obvious partisanship. (All seven judges are Democratic appointees; the selection to the court of five of them was strongly influenced by Dexter Douglass, a Gore lawyer who addressed the court during the dramatic oral argument.) And because its very outrageousness--rewriting the rules of a presidential election after the election--dramatizes...
...Palestinian territories. Though Arafat made moves at week's end to restart peace talks, aides say he is really aiming for a multinational presence to guarantee Palestinian security. And something else: an observer force would give Arafat a chance to mark a favorable border for a Palestinian state. That's just one reason Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is opposed to the idea...