Ummm.... The way I read that opinion is SCOTUS told the Ohio Republicans to buzz off. The opinion was unsigned. Alito, Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas all had opportunities to dissent, yet chose not to. That tells me this was 9-0.

Am I missing something?

I bet we could fix our elections for a less than a hundredth of the cost of the Iraq War. Making sure democracy works here has to be as important as spreading it abroad, right?

That tells me this was 9-0. Am I missing something?

Of course, you're right about the vote on today's decision. But if the election is disputed again -- and there's no guarantee it won't be -- don't expect a unanimous vote by the Supreme Court.

With the Ohio story and a new story in Pennsylvania about a lawsuit being filed by the GOP, not over voter registration fraud but rather insufficient safeguards against it, it seems that the GOP is laying the groundwork for contesting the election or its validity. Obama needs margins that are unassailable by GOP election games...

Bringing up Bush v. Gore restarts my PTSD. I was in law school when that decision was handed down, and I pleaded with my Civ Pro teacher to explain it to me in some way that was not entirely cynical. She couldn't do it. I believe in the rule of law, strongly. Bush v Gore was and remains the high point of legal cynicism in my life.

"Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances!?!" This goes against the entire purpose of the Supreme Court. The whole point is that they are supposed to make consistent law that we all can count on.

And then there's their beautiful closing line: "None are more conscious of the vital limits on judicial authority than are the members of this Court, and none stand more in admiration of the Constitution’s design to leave the selection of the President to the people, through their legislatures, and to the political sphere."

Aaaarrgghhh!

The only hope for renewal of belief in the system, for making some gold out of this turd of a decision, is to actually use Bush v Gore to stand for the equal protection proposition it put forth, despite the "limited to the present circumstances" statement. Not my idea; the NYT's: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/15/opinion/15tues4.html

It's indisputable that election fraud has already occurred in Ohio. No one seems to care.

Link? Since it's indisputable, it should be easy to provide one. (And, no, registration fraud != election fraud. Completely different things.)

Let's see, Gore Vs. Bush election. Isn't that the one where if Algore would have won his home state he would have been president?? Looks like he is on a new diet for a small planet if one can beleive his propaganda.

You gotta beleive.

I want to BELEIVE!

Anybody want to have a Peak Oil Party with me when oil trades at $50/bbl again?

" ... election fraud has already occurred in Ohio. ... Link?"

For starters, f'r instance:

GOP attacks on American voters turn desperate, ugly and dangerous, by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, The Free Press (Ohio), Global Research, October 13, 2008.

1) A Republican sheriff in Greene County, Ohio, has demanded social security and other records from 302 local voters whose ballots he apparently wants to negate. ... claims telephone calls complaining about the potential for voter fraud have prompted him to go after the information.

2) U.S. District Court Judge George C. Smith, a Reagan appointee, has approved a GOP lawsuit demanding that the state give county boards of elections great leeway in attacking new voter registration forms.

4) The New York Times has reported that boards of elections in at least nine crucial states, including Ohio, have violated federal law in conducting purges and have been illegally using Social Security data bases as part of those purges.

5) The Times has also reported that boards of elections in Nevada, North Carolina, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio have illegally used federal Social Security databases to flag and possibly eliminate voters whose registration applications were suspected ....

6) Michigan elections director Christopher Thomas said his state had removed about 11,000 voters in August, while the Times estimated the real number to be closer to 33,000. Thomas refused to make the purged files public.

8) A CBS News report has revealed organized caging attempts by the GOP to eliminate registered voters from the rolls in 19 states.

10) The grassroots organizing group ACORN has come under serious attack in Nevada, Missouri, Ohio and elsewhere from Republicans attempting ... a smear and fear campaign aimed at negating thousands of legitimate ACORN registrants throughout the US.

11) The GOP continues to resist attempts to subpoena Michael Connell, a shady Republican computer operative who programmed the 2000 Bush-Cheney web site. Connell was also hired by former Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell in 2004 to tabulate the Ohio vote count.

12) CNN has reported that Obama's surging poll numbers may leave him "in position to steal Virginia from the GOP." Virginia hasn't backed a Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, but CNN's use of the word "steal" has raised hackles among election protection activists who argue the flow of theft is in the other direction.

The man to read on election fraud and voter caging is Greg Palast. I believe he's got a new piece in Rolling Stone with Robert Kennedy, Jr.

The basic facts are that Florida was stolen in 2000, Ohio was stolen in 2004, and the Republicans are doing everything they can to steal 2008. The Acorn thing is a smoke screen although violations have occurred. But it's nothing like the Karl Rove top-down stuff that's been going on with voter caging. Florida in 2000 was not about chads and dimpled ballots. It was about hiring a private company to purge the rolls of valid voters before hand with Jeb and Katherine Harris running the scam.

2006 was a case of the Dems beating the caging spread, and not by much. At that point the pathetic loser Nancy Pelosi decided to do nothing. Worrying about these problems two weeks out is criminal negligence. Incidentally the scandal with replacing the attorneys general was related to this.

I think it is a fact that the GOP is more of a party for the wealthy so if a valid vote was allowed with ordinary people, the GOP would lose and they know it. Hence, the need for cheating.

I continue to believe that the American system is the best but only if it's allowed to work. One of the most comforting things about the Bush administration is that it took a series of crimes to have it happen at all. It's also revealing that as soon as we turned our back on democracy everything went straight to hell.

The Supreme Court? They knew they had trampled on the law in 2000 which is why Scalia gets so testy when it's brought up saying such ridiculous things as, "That's old news."

Remember Scalia is the one who ruled that torture wasn't cruel and unusual punishment because we weren't trying to punish the person - we were just trying to torture him.

So no wonder he's friends with Cheney. They're both psycho.

About the chads in Florida, there is an important thing never mentioned. The stylus pokes a chad into a shallow collection tray, where chads pile up, unless the tray is emptied during the day. In targeted precincts the trays were NOT emptied. The pile stacks up until it presses the underside of the ballot and blocks the stylus from punching through.

The more voters for one candidate, the faster the chads pile up in that spot. The biggest majority of ballots with 'unpunched' holes, were Gore ballots.

---
On a smirking note, this recent article reviews the conviction process created and applied at Nuremberg to execute hate-talk radio programmers, the LIARS.

US Journalists & War-Crime Guilt, By Peter Dyer, October 15, 2008.

October 16 is an anniversary that should hold considerable interest for American journalists who ... support – the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Sixty-two years ago, on Oct. 16, 1946, Julius Streicher was hanged.

Streicher was one of a group of 10 Germans executed that day following the judgment of the first Nuremberg Trial ... Each was tried for two or more of the four crimes defined in the Nuremberg Charter: crimes against peace (aggression), war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy.

All who were sentenced to death were major German government officials or military leaders. Except for Streicher.

Julius Streicher was a journalist.

Editor of the vehemently anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer, Streicher was convicted of, in the words of the judgment, “incitement to murder and extermination ....”

Presenting the case against Streicher, British prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel M.C. Griffith-Jones said: “My Lord, it may be that this defendant is less directly involved in the physical commission of the crimes against Jews. ... The submission of the Prosecution is that his crime is no less the worse … that he made these things possible – made these crimes possible which could never have happened had it not been for him and for those like him. He led the propaganda and the education of the German people in those ways.”

Two months after the Nuremberg hangings, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 59(I), declaring:

“Freedom of information requires as an indispensable element the willingness and capacity to employ its privileges without abuse. It requires as a basic discipline the moral obligation to seek the facts without prejudice and to spread knowledge without malicious intent.”

The next year another General Assembly Resolution was adopted: Res. 110 which “condemns all forms of propaganda, in whatsoever country conducted, which is either designed or likely to provoke or encourage any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of ....

Democrat minions are cheating all over the country, you don't want registration and voting validated with phoito ID and you attack the initative petition process throwing out thousands of known to be valid signatures. And your party is the open border party.
Yet you are the good election people and the GOP steal elections?
Bill,
Your "facts" about 2000, 2004 and the GOP are simply too bizarre.
Your world view of Republicans must not include any of your neighbors or fellow Oregonians. I LOL and your GOP party for the wealthy bit.
Especially with your own party cheating like crazy.
Tensky,
Allowing chads to stack up in selected districts? Nuts.

Allowing chads to stack up in selected districts? Nuts.

No kidding. Honestly, if you are too f'in stupid to make sure the damn things poked all the way through before you turn your ballot in, you shouldn't be allowed to vote.

too f'in stupid

That's what I love about the righties: their charity and generosity of spirit toward their fellow man.

Ben,
I'm not saying all Republicans are wealthy. I'm saying that's who the party serves and the rest of you are being duped with a false message that you are one of them, when they are merely using you to retain power for their own interests.

As for 2000 in Florida, I don't expect you to know about that because it never made the MSM and it certainly didn't make the right wing talk machine that keeps the flock in line.

A company ChoicePoint was hired by the President's brother Jeb and Katherine Harris to scrub voter roles based on a list of felons from other states. This is a fact. The voters fraudulently removed from the roles were overwhelmingly Democratic and would have given Gore Florida. Just saying the facts are bizarre is not a counter argument. Look into it. If you do, perhaps you will begin to see the inherent criminality of the Bush administration. Or maybe you're in the 24% who still don't get it.

At this point, the correct talking point is to say, "I can't believe you're digging up ancient history like the year 2000. The American People spoke and it's time to move on." But the fact that 2000 was rigged in Florida remains and it wasn't done with the chads. Much as Joe the Plumber is a distration form the way the GOP has treated the working man, the chads were a distration from the real story: The fraudulent scrubbing of the voter roles was the story and that continues to this day.

Of course, the big question is why the Republicans are so afraid of an honest vote in America? Wouldn't they excel if the People got a chance to speak? What Karl Rove and the powers-that-be have long known is that the GOP is a con game on the voters and judging from the responses here, it's still working.

That's what I love about the righties: their charity and generosity of spirit toward their fellow man.

There's only so much you can do Allan. You get to the point where you have to realize this is a country consisting mostly of "C" students. And half of them arent even that smart. Add to that the fact that most immigrants nowadays never even had a school to go to, and you get a vision of where this country is going.
It will come to a point where everyone will be dependent on government to do everything for them. And that makes most lefties get a tingle in their shorts. We probably wont even have to vote eventually. Or it will become like old school Russia where you are basically told who to vote for.

Jon,
This thing with lefties wanting government to do everything for them is just another worthless incorrect talking point. Sort of like the other GOP talking points. Every election we hear that the conservative movement stands for smaller, less intrusive government, but then something truly awful happens: You get in power and prove that it was all talk. Under the conservative movement the government has been doing things TO us, not for us, and that's a whole lot worse.

How do you find the temerity to criticize anyone considering you just served up the worst 8 years of government in American History?

Bill, I did say MOST lefties. And you arent getting an argument from me on Bush. I am a conservative, but not a Republican. I left the party during W's first term. And I dont see me going back to any party again. First, party politics are what has screwed this country up, and second, I like to think for myself.