U.S. to Free Palestinian Held 3 Years on Secret Evidence The release of the immigrant, Mazen Al-Najjar, a Tampa resident and a former adjunct professor at the University of South Florida, is the latest in a string of terrorism cases that have unraveled and exposed justice officials to charges of bias against Arab or Muslim immigrants. The case has also brought new scrutiny of the anti-terrorism bill approved by Congress in 1996 after the World Trade Center bombing, which allowed the Immigration and Naturalization Service to arrest or detain noncitizens, without identifying either their accuser or the evidence against them. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/16/world/16SECR.html

Medal of Honor Well, Wednesday night, in his concession speech, Mr. Gore took a bullet for the country. The shot was fired at the heart of the nation by the five conservative justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, with their politically inspired ruling that installed George W. Bush as president. The five justices essentially said that it was more important that Florida meet its self-imposed deadline of Dec. 12 for choosing a slate of electors than for the Florida Supreme Court to try to come up with a fair and uniform way to ensure that every possible vote in Florida was counted � and still meet the real federal deadline, for the nationwide Electoral College vote on Dec. 18. The five conservative justices essentially ruled that the sanctity of dates, even meaningless ones, mattered more than the sanctity of votes, even meaningful ones. The Rehnquist court now has its legacy: "In calendars we trust." http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/opinion/15FRIE.html

Chicago Tribune | News - Columnists - Eric Zorn

WE'LL HAIL THE NEW CHIEF WHEN WE'RE READY

Speaking for those of us who have not been cutting out recent Tribune editorials on the Florida mess and happily affixing them to the fridge with magnets in the shape of little elephants, let me say this: George W. Bush will be the president of the United States. But we will not be badgered, belittled or soothed into accepting him, uniting behind him, granting him legitimacy or respecting Tuesday's ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, no matter how many contemptuous, argumentative e-mails we get or how many political leaders, ours and theirs, suggest that we take the high road. We're mad as hell. Just like U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, we pointedly decline to affix "respectfully" to our dissenting view--that powerful partisans abused their authority and discretion in order to make sure that possibly decisive ballots were not examined and counted (the name as published has been corrected in this text). http://chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/zorn/

The 2000 Election

Not Selected, Perhaps Elected Gore Chooses America

Mr. Gore said, "I do have one regret, that I didn't get the chance to stay and fight for the American people over the next four years, especially for those who feel their voices have not been heard. I heard you and I will not forget." He added: "I've seen America in this campaign and I like what I see. It's worth fighting for � and that's a fight I'll never stop." http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/14/politics/14GORE.html?pagewanted=all

The 2000 Election

Not a President-elect, but a President-select!

Mr. Bush must live with the knowledge that he won Florida by just 537 votes out of 6 million cast, with a manual recount abandoned, thousands of ballots short of completion, at the order of a court split 5 to 4. Many people noted today that he would take office as the 43rd president by a margin of a single judicial vote, and some people, politicians as well as journalists, vowed to complete the recount on their own. If such a recount showed Mr. Gore the "winner," it could destabilize the Bush administration to a degree. But the historical record shows that narrow victories can grow into commanding political power; Lyndon B. Johnson's entire subsequent career rested upon the shaky base of a tainted Senate victory in Texas by just 87 votes. Rev. Jesse Jackson, � compared Mr. Bush's tactics to those of Slobodan Milosevic and the court's decision to that in the Dred Scott caseof 1857, which held that slaves were not citizens. "Illegitimacy clouds his presidency," Mr. Jackson said of Mr. Bush. "Legitimacy comes from the consent of the governed, and he lacks that." http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/14/politics/14ASSE.html?pagewanted=all

The Bloom Is Off the RobeGarbage by any other name still stinks.

By Single Vote, Justices End Recount, Blocking Gore After 5-Week Struggle Justice John Paul Stevens said the court's action "can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land." His dissenting opinion, also signed by Justices Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, added: "It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today's decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law." http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/politics/13SCOT.html?pagewanted=all

SUPREME COURT ELECTS THE PRESIDENT! Orchestrates "Velvet Legal Coup" "However, even as I accept and will abide by the decision, I also -- with every bone in my body and every ounce of moral strength in my soul -- strongly and vigorously disagree with it. In third world countries when democratically cast votes are not counted, or the person who most likely lost wins in a highly questionable manner, we usually refer to that as a coup d'etat -- the overthrow of a government, usually by a small group of persons. All legal votes in Florida were not counted. If they had been counted, there is at least a strong possibility that Vice President Gore would have received the most votes in Florida as he did in the country -- which is why the Bush people did not want the votes counted. Even more important than partisan politics, the votes should have been counted in the name of democracy in order to give the maximum amount of credibility and legitimacy to the eventual winner. What we have just witnessed is a Supreme Court that was used as a willing tool of the Bush campaign.

The Supreme Court of the Republican Party declares George W. Bush President-select.

Raising the Stakes That is what has now been thrown into question: the public belief that the court is "detached, dispassionate and trustworthy." The court's order stopping the recount of ballots in Florida � a 5-to-4 decision along ideological lines � looked to many Americans like a partisan intervention to save the day for Governor Bush. The Bush forces had worked for a month to prevent a manual recount of doubtful ballots, evidently in the belief that counting them would put Mr. Gore ahead. Now, just after recounts had begun, the five more conservative members of the Supreme Court stopped the process. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/11/opinion/11LEWI.html

To Any Lengths Mr. Bush and his party have made it clear to the country and the world that their greatest fear � the scenario they dread above all others � is that somehow, someway, all of the votes legally cast in Florida would actually be counted. They have demonstrated their willingness to go to almost any lengths to prevent that from happening. And that resolve was given the unfortunate imprimatur of the nation's highest court on Saturday when, in a 5-to-4 decision, the court ordered the hand recounts in Florida to stop. But the Bush team's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear oral arguments this morning, is just one prong of the G.O.P.'s dangerous assault on the spirit of democracy that has served this nation so well for so long. The truth is that while Mr. Bush and the Republicans will be more than happy to accept a final Supreme Court ruling in their favor, they are already prepared to take extraordinary steps to circumvent a ruling that goes against them.

Many Charges Are Dismissed In G.O.P. Convention Protests Essentially it was a war on free speech

Many Charges Are Dismissed In G.O.P. Convention Protests Lawyers for the protesters arrested during the convention said the court results confirmed their complaint at the time that the arrests by the Philadelphia police were a pre- emptive street-sweeping tactic designed to stifle lawful protest and head off distractions from the convention agenda. Most of the protesters, who were interested in a variety of causes, including capital punishment and labor conditions in a global economy, spent a week or more in jail and were released after the convention, said the R2K Legal Collective, the main defense group for the demonstrators.

Many Charges Are Dismissed In G.O.P. Convention Protests the city of Philadelphia's criminal cases have been collapsing against many of the 391 people arrested last August as they gathered for protests and civil disobedience outside the Republican National Convention. Sixty-nine cases have been dismissed in the last two weeks as prosecutors and the police have failed to convince the courts that there was any evidence tying those arrested to crimes. In one mass trial, 38 of 43 cases were dismissed when the prosecution failed to prove misdemeanor charges by submitting videotapes of crowds of protesters. The court demanded specific testimony from arresting officers about witnessing each person's alleged wrongdoing.

The 2000 Election Justice Stevens identified three principles he said the order today had violated: respect for rulings by state courts on questions of state law; the cautious exercise of the United States Supreme Court's jurisdiction on matters that largely concern other branches of government; and declining to exercise jurisdiction over federal questions "that were not fairly presented to the court whose judgment is being reviewed." "The majority has acted unwisely," he said.

Text "All Americans can live with votes counted for Gov. George W. Bush. But our democracy cannot live if the votes of the American people are not counted. An uncounted vote says to the American people that THEY don't count. "If the Supreme Court's actions -- whatever that may ultimately turn out to be -- in the end, prohibit all votes cast from being fully, fairly and inclusively counted (to the degree humanly possible), then the Supreme Court will have discredited itself, lost much of its moral and legal authority, the Justices themselves will have contributed mightily to undermining the very institution they represent, and undermined the rule of law that they are sworn to uphold on behalf of the American people,"