<You have to protect the process (from Kathleen Harris and Anthony Scalia, among many others).

Cripes, give it a rest, already. The Democrats and their lawyers descended en masse on Florida--using a previously prepared plan--and went to work to cook the system until it turned out the way they wanted. Invalidating military votes--and I read the damn memo myself, there was no other way to interpret it--was only one of the dirty tricks. What they had expected was for the Republicans to be paralyzed like deer in the headlights, like they usually are when the Democrats put on the political brass knuckles. Big surprise--to me as well as to the Democrats--: the Republicans put on their own brass knuckles and started playing the same game, including the mau mau tactics so beloved by the left. At the end of the day, the Republicans won, but to pretend that a bunch of sweet, wide-eyed Democratic party members were blindsided by the evil Republicans is irritating to say the least.

And I'm a little tired of the flat-out lie that the Supreme Court handed Bush the presidency. Had the Supreme Court suddenly vanished in a puff of blue light, and the recount Gore demanded had been completed as he wanted, the result would still have been Bush. Bush, Bush, Bush. Bush. Not Gore. Bush. Not Nader. Bush. Gore would have had to generate an entirely different recount statewide under certain specific imaginary vote rules to even have a hope of coming out ahead.

The Supreme Court shortened the process, but made no real difference in the outcome.

Get over it already. You don't see me constantly bitching about the Democratic press calling the Florida election for Gore while the polls were still open in the Florida panhandle, or calling states for Gore on the faintest of leads or even without a lead* and not calling them for Bush until the state was nailed down tight--if then. I was there and watching. I saw.

If you repeat a lie often enough, people will buy it. I'm just really getting tired of this one. And believe me, it's not just you. Your small dig was just the straw that broke the camel's back. I've gotten this shit from a lot of different directions in the past week.

*The count for Florida consistently showed Bush in the lead long into the night. Despite this, the state was never taken out of the Gore column.