I just can't work myself up to shed any tears for someone who completely abrogated her judgment and responsibility for a "gut" reaction that SHE knew better than the large majority who voted for Gore because she liked the parents AND he's a Republican!. She utterly deserves to be shamed by her decision. If only the million dead Iraqis and Americans (and millions more damaged by her choice) could be brought back, perhaps THEY would forgive her. Tough Titties bitch! Pardon my FRENCH!
Posted by DeminNewJ at September 20, 2007 02:19 PMShe could kill herself and it wouldn't undo the damage, but it would at least be honorable. I can't think of another honorable thing a Republican has done in the last 7 years.
Posted by at September 20, 2007 02:19 PMBush v. Gore was the unforeseen wildcard of fate that marks the beginning of the end of America. It was the original sin in which Bushco was conceived. As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.
In the 2000 election, we had two of the country's institutions completely fail us: the last vestige of the Repub Party as a responsible national institution, and far worse, the supreme court. The conservative justices showed that they were intensely partisan and were quite happy to decide cases on a completely political basis, just as they long accused Lib'ruls of, except here their political partisanship was exponentially worse and blatant.
Thanks to conservatives, both pundits and judges, America now sees every judical decision as a politically motivated, subjective one, not based in objective law. We will never move back to our old way of thinking, or of trusting the courts. Big loss for a country supposedly based on the rule of law.
The idea that the constitution mandated reversing the FL supreme court's decision to have the state courts try to count every undervote in FL was simply baseless, unprecedented and preposterous. Sandra the judge was well aware of this, but she thought the unelected conservative judicial "guardians" knew best, EXACTLY the position that conservatives had criticized Lib'rul justices for for years. Now we can see that their "criticism" was hypocritical in the extreme.
Think about what Sandra and the right wing boys did in Bush v. Gore: they ENSURED that we would be saddled with the first electoral college president in 113 years---one they knew had clearly LOST the popular vote. That's what these supposedly impartial "justices" bent over backward to ensure.
Why FAVOR having the anti-democratic electoral college decide the election when there clearly was a substantial chance that FL vote had actually gone to popular vote winner Gore, especially after the state supreme court (responsible for its state elections) had already ordered the recount? What kind of democracy-favoring "policy" is that? Incredible partisan hubris and hypocrisy from the "conservative" justices.
As America sinks into its irreversible decline as a result of the vile, lawbreaking, constitution smashing Bush "presidency", and as the Roberts Court reverses most of her most proud precedents, I hope Sandra is haunted for the rest of her life and knows that her vote brought the whole disaster upon the country and doomed the nation. Thanks, Ms. "Guardian".
Final question: why doesn't Bush rub Sandra D's nose in the dogshit and award her the Medal of Freedom for her many "accomplishments"?
Posted by euzoius at September 20, 2007 03:10 PMOh boo hoo!
Sandra Day O'Connor will just have to live with her legacy. Feel badly for Sandra, get serious. I feel sorry for all the people who have been damaged by her decision. It's too late Sandra dear. Get over it. Like Powell, your whole service to this Country is tarnished forever, and you will be remembered for only one thing, making GWB pResident of this Nation. Nothing you did prior to that has any relevance.
Posted by Judith at September 20, 2007 03:23 PMI used to teach a college class that included the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany, and when you look at the details, there were all sorts of exactly this kind of person involved in that travesty as well: "decent" and "honorable" old style conservatives who really hated the know-nothing radical right rabble, yet for one reason or another enabled the little corporal and his gang because . . . because . . . because . . . And then when it was too late and they saw what he was really like, they said, "Well, that's not what we thought would happen at all . . ."
It's too late, baby, oh, it's too late . . .
Posted by Delia at September 20, 2007 03:29 PMFinal question: why doesn't Bush rub Sandra D's nose in the dogshit and award her the Medal of Freedom for her many "accomplishments"?
Euzoius, oh that it would be true. That would be the ultimate rub her nose in it.
Posted by Judith at September 20, 2007 03:32 PMActually, I bet if someone suggested that Bush award O'Connor the medal of freedom, he would do it.
Let's get the ball rolling!
While you're lamenting, she didn't vote to over come Roe did she. Her "party" wanted that vote, yet she decided with the Roe finding. Many here were sorry she left, felt the court would go conservative and she needed to stay. Many of her votes carried the support of many Democrats. You're just finding one, ONE vote, and you're accepting the word filtered by Jeffrey Toobin from CNN. Down through her years there, I'm sure she decided many issues in favor of Democrats. That garnered the praise of Democrats. Read the decisions in G v. B, read the analysis of those two decisions. There were sound principles written about in both cases.
Posted by peter at September 20, 2007 03:46 PMPoor thing. May she rot in hell for forcing Bush and Cheney on this nation and the world. Her SCOTUS vote will be her legacy and a tarnished one at that.
Posted by Christopher at September 20, 2007 04:09 PMSoon the Bush folks will have to get in line to tell their sad stories about how they betrayed us.
Posted by Sally at September 20, 2007 04:16 PMSorry Peter,
Only in the analysis of Pepperdine University scholars (an oxymoron as silly as the sad joke, American Enterprise Scholar) are there any "sound principles" invoked in the
Gore v. Butch case. Even Antonin Scalia was careful to uselessly declare that there would be no basis for stare decisis based on that disgraceful decision.
Sandra, the regretful bitch knows how woeful that decision was. When an individual decides on a course of action that is so incredibly destructive for so many hundreds of millions of people, she neither deserves or can expect her previous, minimally undestructive decisions to have any weight in comparison. Don't you think it's time you opened your eyes and your mind to the real world?
Sorry, I forgot. Take the blue pill now.
Posted by DeminNewJ at September 20, 2007 04:18 PMWell, Peter, that's really the basis of my critique. She was capable of making wise, informed decisions. On many occasions she did make wise, informed decisions. Yet on the one time when it mattered most, when the very fate of the Republic hung in the balance, she went with her prejudices, and we all went down.
Oh, and for an anticlimax: a few years later when she could have mitigated the damage just a little by hanging on at the Court, she decided to resign to take care of her husband, who by that time was too far gone in Alzheimers for her to help.
We never expected anything else from troglodytes like Scalia or Thomas. O'Connor could do better and she didn't. That's why her failure is so egregious.
Posted by Delia at September 20, 2007 05:45 PMPresidents aren't supposed to pick justices based on whether they will overrule a particular precedent---that's a new development brought in by conservative Repub presidents.
Conservative judges now try to "craft" extremist voting records so "conservative" presidents will elevate them to the Court, and the senate always goes along with confirming these extremists. This was the model Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito followed---voted as far right extremist appeals judges, exactly as the Federalist Society desired, and got themselves on the extremist short-list.
They always vote exactly as "predicted". None will ever be considered a notable justice by history because their opinions are simply results orientedand ideological. Their opinions are always unpersuasive, except to those who already want the "result" obtained.
The Court is gone for at least 30 years, and probably for good. So you can celebrate, peter, your "side" has prevailed: racial inequality will return and flourish, Christianist social legislation will hopefully blight the entire brain-dead South and drive all sensible citizens away. Repub presidents will be permitted to ignore and break clearly applicable laws and usurp the rights of Congress. Agency decisions will be approved or disapproved based on what party is running the executive branch. Government will run roughshod over individual rights, just as it used to do, and corporations will be allowed to screw their workers, despite legislation suppposedly preventing it. The environment will be destroyed.
A "conservative" Court is what you assclowns wanted above all, so congratulations. Perhaps you'll be dragged in by your local police under the new constitutional rules for a little "questioning". One can only hope. Have fun!
Posted by euzoius at September 20, 2007 05:48 PMPeter believes, for some reason, that these precedents don't affect him in anyway. Good luck with that Peter.
Posted by Judith at September 20, 2007 06:28 PMDelia, such a drama queen. "The fate of the republic", what a crock. And even bringing in the good old NSDAP, well golly gee. Everybody's fav, Germany in the twenties and thirties. Sandra's leaving is her personal choice, no fault there ever.
Euz, I didn't like the Kelo decision decided with Justice O'Connor. Roberts was a breathe of fresh air. Alito's ok, I remember how people thought Justice Souter would be more conservative, then he mostly voted with the liberals on the Court.
I'll agree with you a little. The next election is more about the Court than anything else for me. Our next president will be making two and probably three appointments to SCOTUS. I'm for trusting Giuliani here. I want him making the choice, period. The AG just nominated was for him. He will serve into Giuliani's admin.
More name calling from NJ, my birthplace, oh well.
Posted by peter at September 20, 2007 06:35 PMI used to think that the memoirs and histories would reveal direct ex parte contacts between the majority Justices, particularly Scalia, who had a relative working in the bush transition operation -- and people from the Bush campaign in Houston.
I am saddened to find out that such contacts were not even necessary.
With a little help from Anthony Kennedy's towering vanity -- tell A.K. his vote is the only thing that will keep the tanks from rolling, and generations yet unborn will sing his praises and he'd have voted for anything -- the deal was already done.
Posted by Davis X. Machina at September 20, 2007 06:45 PMSandra Day O'Connor wasn't a particularly wise SC Justice. Nor is there anything particularly noble about her western style, "old fashioned" Republicanism. Add a touch of feminism and environmentalism and strip off a layer of religious fundamentalism and racism from anyone among the current majority, and you get Sandra.
If the prior liberal court was "making law" out of whole cloth, they too would have conditioned some rulings by stating that they may not be used as a precedent. That's how Ms. O'Connor and the other four showed their hand and told the world that the text of the decision was window dressing. That they were fully aware of the fact that they were violating the Constitution.
Today she's just like all those people in Congress who say, "If I'd known then what I know now, I woudn't have voted for the IWR." Sorry, we don't pay you to be stupid -- stupider than a large number of ordinary citizens who could see that Bush/Cheney were lying this country into war and that there was no Constitutional basis for GWB's appeal to the Supreme Court. (And unlike our distracting trolls here, I wouldn't feel differently if the situation in FL 2000 had been reversed. Nothing good ever comes from winning by cheating.)
I hope all these people rot in hell. Can't do anything about Justice O'Connor, but it does sicken me that so many people I like and respect want to promote one of the idiots that advocated for and voted for the IWR. That would be like having elected a DEM POTUS in 2004 and supporting the promotion of O'Connor to Chief Justice.
Posted by Marie at September 20, 2007 07:18 PMI have no pity for her, but she was fucked, if not literally, although I'm not discounting that revolting thought, by the Boy's Branch of SCOTUS. Why do you think they all wear robes? Easy access to prime directives, of course. God, I won't sleep tonight.
Posted by tempus at September 20, 2007 08:00 PMSo, in her love for the Republican party, she enabled the inplacement of the one man who just may preove to be the last Republican president.
Ironic.
She "just didn't like to hear"the argument, and she new and liked one plaintiff's dad.
This is the kind of seriousness and profesionalism she sees as appopriate for a SC justice?
Regrets are cheap. You sold out your high office and your country.
Traitor bitch. Go rot in the Arizona sun.
Posted by Mike G at September 20, 2007 11:55 PMWhile i can agree the critisism on the decision in GvB i cannot fault her for taking care of her husband.
Posted by Greup at September 21, 2007 12:15 AMSomeone reported (can't remember where I read this) that O'Connor, while at a Washington cocktail party she attended before the 2000 elections, stated that she didn't want a Democrat to win the election because she didn't want a Democrat selecting her replacement on the Supreme Court.
This was why she didn't step down while Bill Clinton was president and why she cast the deciding vote in Bush v. Gore, siding with the hardcore, right-wing nutjobs on the Supreme Court, a court that used to be just as respected as the Justice Department used to be.
Sandra Day O'Connor will NEVER be able to reclaim her reputation. She sold out our democracy for purely partisan, selfish purposes...just as all the purely partisan, selfish Republican nutjobs have done.
Because she was obviously the deciding vote on the evenly split Supreme Court, the blood of the countless victims of the Bush/Cheney lunacy are on her hands. The 9/11 victims. The Hurricane Katrina victims. Everyone who's died over in Iraq or been maimed for life because of Bush/Cheney's premeditated, preemptive war against a nation that had nothing at all to do with the 9/11 attacks. And all the people that will surely die if Bush/Cheney drop bombs on Iran.
Sandra Day O'Connor owes our nation an apology, but she probably has the same neo-con Republican trait that Bush has...mistake, what mistake, we neo-con Republicans never make mistakes...and never, ever apologize. Bloated egos. Dangerous bloated egos. Lying, cheating, stealing, dangerous bloated egos.
Posted by The Oracle at September 21, 2007 12:55 AMFuck Sandra Day O'Connor. The woman was an evil cunt in the '80s and she's an evil cunt now. Regrets? I don't give a fuck. She's part and parcel of the problem.
Also, Dellia's got her number.
Posted by Brian Bell at September 21, 2007 05:20 AMYou know, there are some mistakes you can make, and hopefully learn a lesson from and move on with your life. There are other mistakes that you make that affect you the rest of your life. Guess which one she made. I hope she is haunted by her mistake the rest of her life.
Posted by Judith at September 21, 2007 06:22 AMSo a country club, rugged individualist, patrician Republican put narrow class, subjective and partisan interests before principle and the nation? And this is news?
Republicans are dangerous, dishonest and self-dealing. Everything else is commentary.
Posted by Pvt. Keepout at September 21, 2007 06:38 AMMedal of Freedom sounds right to me.
Posted by angel at September 21, 2007 07:00 AMgreup: While i can agree the critisism on the decision in GvB i cannot fault her for taking care of her husband.
I can. Her husband was ill before the 2000 election. If she cared more about him than she did about making sure her seat remained in the hands of a conservative, she would have resigned then. Instead she held on for the election of a GOP POTUS who would select a conservative replacement for her. And when that GOP wasn't elected, she took it upon herself to override the election. Then she was trapped because resigning in GWB's first term would show her true colors.
So, in order to salvage her reputation for her political decision, she had to hold on. Until it was too late. She paid a personal price for being a political hack (and this wasn't the first or last time she played one of the Supreme Court - merely the most obvious one), but only a very tiny one when compared with the damage she did to the Supreme Court, the nation and the world.
This is what happens when second rate legal minds get a seat on the Supreme Court.
Posted by Marie at September 21, 2007 11:04 AMI lost all respect for O'Connor over this decision although I admit that it had been fraying a bit as she hobbled Roe v. Wade.
If O'Connor's legacy is tarnished and her personal life less than satisfactory it is less punishment than she deserves. Whether Gore would have won had the recount continued we can never really know. We do know that the ruling was not a judicial decision, but a partisan political gift. The court was diminished and sullied by it, and the Constitution, judiciary, judicial system and the country damaged.
Every justice who signed that abomination deserves whatever torments this life sees fit to hand them. Their betrayal of the Constitution, the law, and the country for partisan gain will never be adequately punished.
Posted by clio at September 21, 2007 11:46 AMSDO, like Colin Powell, Matthew Dowd, and the others in the pack of phony apostates, read books. They know that books will be written about them. They want their biographies to have happy endings, like a John Wayne movie, hence the phony regrets and whiny professions of ignorance. This is one of the most nauseating phenomena in American life.
Posted by RKimble at September 22, 2007 08:47 AMher legacy is the Bush Regime
NUFF SAID
Posted by gay veteran at September 23, 2007 12:42 PM