60 Minutes: Scalia On Bush v. Gore 2000: "Get Over It"
By Logan Murphy Wednesday Apr 23, 2008 8:20pm
During an interview set to air on this Sunday's 60 Minutes, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that people need to get over the court's 5-4 decision to select George Bush over Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election:
Scalia repeated his earlier statement that people should "get over" the court's ruling in 2000 that halted Florida's vote recount, giving the presidential election to Republican Bush over Democrat Al Gore.
"I say nonsense," Scalia said, when asked about critics who say the 5-4 ruling was based on politics and not justice. "Get over it. It's so old by now." Read on...
This is an insult to America and the planet. The death and destruction that George Bush and his regime have unleashed since his selection will take decades, perhaps generations to repair and Scalia has the nerve to say something like this? Our Constitution is being shredded, our military is broken and bogged down in two failing military conflicts that have left hundreds of thousands dead, our economy is in the tank with more Americans on food stamps and lacking health insurance than at any time in modern history, and we're supposed to get over it? No, Justice Scalia, we will not get over it -- at least not any time soon.
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According to the transcript from this interview, he states that the vote was actually 7-2. I've never heard that before.
What's the truth here?
Obviously a scholar in the Cheney Institute of Public Insensitivity
Fuck. What an asshole.
They appoint the worst war criminal to the White House and we are just supposed to "get over it" - what does it take to impeach a supreme court justice?
miss_kitty @ 3:
that's exactly what I said when I first heard this nonsense!
he's a poster boy for how our courts have been sabotaged by rightwingers.
Cufford @ 1:
from what I've always understood is the vote was right down party lines - 5 to 4
Just to clarify my comments above, I first saw this story linked from Raw Story, which linked to the following article which quotes him as saying that the vote was "seven to two".
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/24/60minutes/main4040290.shtml
This why we need to elect a Democrat in November. any Democrat...Obama, Hillary, Donald Duck I don't care who just someone who will fill the seats of sick and old current Supreme Court Justices with thirty year old, left wing folks. Then the four assholes of the right wing apocalypse ( Scalia, Scalito, Thomas and Roberts ) can lose 5-4 after 5-4 decision for the rest of their evil lives.
The Italians had the right idea when Mussolini's gov got toppled. Lamp post ornaments.
Asshole!!!!
It was the right decision at the time. I remember to spectacle of trying to figure out what people "meant" by their ballot and the fact is that Florida was basically a statistical tie so the most efficient and fair way to decide it was to just do the count mechanically and accept whatever the outcome was. Next time it could be the other way around and your guy (or gal) might end up on top. At that time (2000) this country was pretty much split 50/50. It's not like the overwhelming will of the people was denied. So Scalia is right, just get over it already!
My muscular butt he's for law and order. The Supreme Court had no jurisdiction in the Florida Election. It was, by definition, a judicial coup carried out by partisans. The founding fathers would be challenging lots of people to duels if they had been around.
singe @ 9:
Given what reality tells about our federal government; that it's utterly corrupted by money, and on both side of the aisle, I fail to understand that delusional opinion that if a Democrat is elected, Supreme Court appointments will be any different. Why would you assume this? Based upon what? Fairy tale fantasies that Democrats aren't as beholden to the big money interests as Republicans are? That's a nice dream, I guess.
good to be reminded of the enemy on occasion
So?!
Super-SUPER delegates.
Just get over it @ 12:
Why don't you tell the mothers and wives of the dead soldiers to get over it? Why don't you tell people who can't afford food right now to get over it? Let me know when you do it, though. I want to be there to see what happens.
What a petulant little thug. No you traitor . . . we will never get over it . . . ever. What a little man.
singe @ 9:
Theres no statue on the size of the SCOTUS, it could have quite a few more members, lets put NINE extra liberals onto the bench to upset the existing status quo, then we can place bets on how long Scalia, Scalito, Thomas and Roberts decide to resign or do the decent thing. Ulcers, hand wringing and whining on Faux would be a fitting end to their careers.
Scy @ 19:
We're at war because of this guy. He needs his nose rubbed in it every day for the rest of his miserable life.
Gore had miscalculated O'Connor's interests and her character. Beyond a partisan desire for Bush's election, O'Connor had strong personal reasons to block Gore's apparent victory. According to close friends, she wants to become the first female U.S. chief justice, an ambition that she hopes President Bush will fulfill.
As I reported on Dec. 11, O'Connor was visibly upset -- indeed furious -- when on Election Night, Nov. 7, the networks predicted that Gore would take Florida.
"This is terrible," she said
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2001/010701a.html
That walking Talking sack of manure should be kicked out on his fat ass by Congress....Oh Damn I forgot Our Congress doesn't do Shite!
Cufford, all four of the most right wing appointments were made by Republicans. If you are saying the federal government is a joke and nothing will ever happen to free the oppressed until capitalism is ended and we have a socialist state as is promoted by the Sparticists and others I understand your point though I do not agree with it completely...is this your point?
Yeah, just like Scalia got over Roe v Wade, or, better example for the rest of us , Dred Scott.
Thank God even SCOTUS had the sense to refuse the Schiavo case.
What a tool he is.
"I voted to kill democracy in America. Now it is time to look forward and forgeddaboudit!"
Seems to me.. by his remarks... he must be feeling the heat. Good, we aren't going to "get over it" so please be prepared to hear about it over and over and over again... this is your legacy and you earned it.
Get over what amounts to a stolen election and a coup?
Not on your life. What a shithead. Wonder what we're supposed to "just get over" next? Torture?
John Dean and I aren`t over it.Read Broken Government and see what has really happened to our Federal court system and what Dean,a Republican says about the Bush criminals.
At the end of the book he asks another Republican friend what he would advise Americans.The guy responded:"Never vote for a Republican.You cannot trust a word they say." From a life long R,that is saying where that party is.
I will never vote for a Rethug,and I will never get over it, you fucking crook.
We are witnessing a very bad part of the history of our country.
The amazing part is they are still in office and it will get worse with no accountability.
None.
They are getting a free pass and the spineless have done nothing.
There is plenty of blame to go around.
ferrofluid @ 20:
I LIKE your idea, a perfect way to disempower the neocon character of the court!
Why do so many Republican men remind me of Porky Pig? There's Karl Rove, and Rush Limbaugh, Tony Scalia.... Pudgy jowls, I guess. Though Scalia also looks a bit like Mr. Magoo in that picture.
Scalia is a supreme douchbag. Religion informs most of HIS social views but conveniently ignores them when he's telling the European Union they're pussies over the death penalty.
... Scalia, who has long supported capital punishment, also ridiculed European criticism of the death penalty in the United States.
"If you took a public opinion poll, if all of Europe had representative democracies that really worked, most of Europe would probably have the death penalty today," he said.
"There are arguments for it and against it. But to get self-righteous about the thing as Europeans tend to do about the American death penalty is really quite ridiculous," he said.
Self righteous indeed you fat prick. I guess the Catholic church is wrong on that one but right on homosexuality.
He made clear his contempt for gay people, effectively comparing homosexuality to murder: “I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible – murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals – and could even exhibit ‘animus’ toward such conduct,” Scalia sneered. “Surely that is the only sort of ‘animus’ at issue here: moral disapproval of homosexual conduct…”
It boggles the mind that this moron will still be passing judgement in his black robe long after society has moved way beyond his antiquated prejudice...
If the decision was based in sound law and precedent, Scalia would have cited the law and defended the decision. The fact that he gave a flip answer is further evidence that it was a political decision. History will judge the five justices poorly.
Well, this may sound a bit harsh as my children are attending universities and things look good for them. I shudder to think of parents that lost children in this war on fear and will visit their graves with the "get over it" concept in their heads.
Calling Scalia an immoral cockroach is an insult to immoral cockroaches.
Scalia not only is dumb he looks dumber. What an embarrassment to the United States this man is. I don't remember who appointed him to the SCOTUS but may they rot in hell. We all know why Roberts and Scalito are there (wasn't it Scalito's wife who "cried") and we remember why Thomas the pervert is there. May all four have a pox on them and resign because of "ill health." I had never heard that about O'Conner but glad she was bush-wacked by Bush and didn't get to become Chief Justice. What a hag.
He reflects that cabal's view of America when it comes to their coup.
It was a coup. And he is/was a ring leader.
#12, when are you going to enlist? asshole.
anneyhussein @ 31:
Very well fed on the money they make breaking the backs of the working class.
singe @ 24:
Wow...talk about extrapolating and putting words into someone's mouth. Geez, just take my words at face value; what I said.
"Why would you assume this? Based upon what?"
Your observation that Republicans have made some ostensibly bad appointments has no bearing on what future Democratic presidents would do.
I simply ask that question; on what basis do people "assume" that these "future" appointments will be good ones.
Actually, it was a rhetorical question because I know the answer. You read it all the time here on these blogs; "Democrats are good, Republican's are bad". That's what people tend to believe here, but not based on any current reality whatsoever. It's just a side to take. A hope to cling on to.
The problems in our government are systemic, to be sure, and that knowledge should temper people's blind faith in a particular "club" that they want to believe in.
If anything, I would think that the most recent history; of the 2006 mid-terms where Democrats promised all sorts of things to get elected and then promptly did nothing of the sort since, would make some people thing more deeply about the reality of things.
That's my only point.
The Supreme Court of the United States is not supposed to overturn an election. Scalia doesn't sound like the thoughtful, pensive, intelligent kind of person I want on the Supreme Court. "Get over it?" No thank you, Judge Scalia.
A typical coward answer is to say "old news." Let them put on his tomb stone, "Tried to establish a dictatorship in the United States." We don't plan to ever get over that.
Just get over it @ 12:
I had no idea one celled creatures could type.
The five will have live with the fact they set the country, they swore to protect, on the road to disaster. The lives lost in Iraq can also be traced back to the five Chaney stooges. Fortunately for the king stooge, Rhenquist, he did not live long enough to see the day the 4,000th solider died in Iraq.
Verum @ 44:
Yeah, and live very well indeed.
"Dick Cheney, the chairman of Haliburton, shot Supreme Court Justice Scalia in a hunting accident, and the bullet went right through him and killed Karl Rove and Tucker Carlson." (Death from family guy)
this is a perfect example of why america has every right to be bitter
Maybe if we all get insanely lucky, Cheney and Scalia will go hunting together and the both of them will have simultaneous wild shots.
You know, death and destruction are not things that we can really "repair". That is what makes this decision so huge. What people need to "get over" is the notion that we will be able to just fix everything Bush has done even over the course of several decades. We'll never be able to wipe the slate clean, we just need to choose a different path and do what we can to make amends.
Dahgrostabphri @ 7:
Seven to two or five to four? Five to one, baby, one to five; no one here gets out alive!
I can boil the truth down for ya in easily digestible chunks. :)
There were different legal issues at work in Bush v. Gore. On one of them, the court came down 7-2. On the other, the court was split 5-4.
The first issue was whether Florida's recount, as it was being conducted, violated the Equal Protection Clause. The argument the Bush folks were using was that the hand recounts had no standard from county to county. A vote that might have been counted in one county would have be thrown out in another. Moreover, the state of Florida seemed to have no mechanism for ensuring that each person's vote counted equally. Seven of the justices on the court agreed that, as it was proceeding, Florida's vote counting violated the Constitution's protection of the one-person-one-vote rule.
Then came the question of what to do about it, and this is where the Court split right down party lines. The left-leaning four (two of whom did not see a problem with the vote count in the first place) said, if there is a Constitutional violation here, the Supreme Court should remand the case back to the Florida courts with directions about how to revamp the vote count in order to make it comply with the Equal Protection Clause.
The right-leaning five said, sorry, but we can't do that. The federal government does not have jurisdiction to tell a state how to count its votes. We can only decide that the manner in which it's counting is unconstitutional, but we can't instruct them to do anything.
The result: Florida couldn't do anything but stop its recount, and certify the results as they were.
That's somewhat of a simplification of the issues involved, but it gets to the heart of the matter. There's a certain rationale to what the Court did, but it's a mind-numbing rationalization, and an exploitation of legal technicalities.
Not political? Bullshit. And Scalia knows it. Souter almost quit the Court because of it.
Wow. By that same token, he should just "get over" any changes made to the Constitution in the past 200 years as well, instead of trying to take us back in time as a strict constructionist.
´´Its so old by now , get over it´´!
Well well well, isint that kind of the sink calling the tub white´´? get over it.
Sure fat tony, so long as ppl have gotten over your comments in church to a reporter to go fuck themselfs. Nice lingo in your so called house of worship. Oh and fat tony, what about your connections to the mob? yanno way back in the when your sorry dago ass was busy busting the dirty from jail. So say if one of your so called back then clients goes nuts after you released him and kills ?? ppl, will you say the same ? get over it?
Its time for Tony bologna to go. Leave now,, retire to bauton rouge and enjoy them high stakes poker games.
oh and Tony? fung go to you too ok?
This is the type of shit that BUSH appointed to the SCOTUS????? id laugh in his face and ask em what it took for his family to make it over the states. Goats? selling sisters? or just plain leg breaking for the price of a ticket.?
Cufford, well then given that McSame and all the former Republican candidates said they would make Scalia-like appointments to the court and none of the Democrats have I guess I'll take my chances with the Democrats...too bad though I thought I had run into an old Trot and would have enjoyed exchanging impressions...instead I suspect you are engaging in sophistry and really want more pigs on the court...bye, bye.
karen, they got the guns but we got the numbers.....
That there are folks out there that love this 'prick of misery' is astounding.
I sure hope this fucking traitor of an asshole is happy with the pathetic state of this country , we have him and his bush cronies to thank. The supreme court is anything but supreme thanks to this fucking waste of skin.
And why are people holding Sandra Day O'Connor in esteem, and cavorting with her? She's one of the anti-democratic five too.
They should be impeached.
Karen @ 50:
Thank you for clarifying, but i think you forgot to mention that the decision also stated that it's decision should not be a prescedant meaning it should never be followed by another court in making a decision.
Which in my opinion is tantamount to saying, "What we just did has no basis in law and is bullshit!"
Verum @ 44:
Personally, I will never forgive Sandra Day O'Connor for resigning when she did. She knew the mistake they made on Bush v. Gore. She regretted it. She wanted off the Court, but wanted a Republican to replace her. So, she helped install Bush, and realized what a disaster it was.
Once Bush took office for a second time, she decided she just couldn't wait out the four years again to retire. She was elderly, and wanted to retire. Yeah? Tough shit, Sandy D! The least you could have done was wait it out so that president shit-for-brains didn't replace you.
Scalia is old too.
This disgusting pig Scalia also claimed that Gore was the one who got the courts involved. NO! It was Bush who sued in federal court when Gore wanted a recount of the 4 counties.
This pathological liar can't even get his facts straight.
Scalia the shithead also said he never makes up his mind before hand! Bullshit, he spews more rhetoric than Rush Limbaugh whenever an abortion case gets to the Court. Rush does it on the radio, Scalia the hacker does it on the Supreme Court.
Just get over it @ 12:
You are completely DEAD-ASSED-DUMB-F__KING-WRONG. The country was NOT split 50/50. Gore WON the popular vote. The Supreme Court PREVENTED FLORIDA VOTES FROM BEING COUNTED! How is that NOT a perversion of everything this "representative democracy" is supposed to stand for?
"Just get over it..." is REPUBLICAN FORKED TONGUE for:
"... and we screwed up the Constitution in the past...
and we made some REALLY BIG foreign policy decisions in the past...
and we never brought Bin Laden to justice...
and threw all of the poor people in the Big Easy under the bus...
and we have put $10,000,000,000 in oil company profits into our friends' pockets...
and we outed an American under cover agent for political purposes...
and we have created this RECESSION that we don't know how th fix...
BUT THAT'S ALL IN THE PAST... and we want to talk about the future.
I wish them all fevers and boils.
I, PERSONALLY, will be able to "get over this" when the White House will be controlled by the Democrats long enough to appoint the number of Supreme Court judges that will return the court to common sense and justice and Constitutional sensitivity.
Karen @ 50:
Thank you for clarifying!
As you note, it was obviously politically influenced and so Scalia's reference to the 7-2 vote is an attempt at coy deflection from the greater facts of the story.
A true Republican! (or should I say, politician)
the ultimate act of intellectual cowardice. rag someone holding an opposing
viewpoint from you for something that, if the roles were reversed,
you and everyone who's viewpoint you share would be crying
about for infinity.
if the roles WERE reversed, and the SC had been
one more democrat and one less republican at the time,
and Gore was president right now.... of course we would
be better as a country (nobody in their right mind could deny
that for a second)... but i think i'd at least have the decency
of allowing republicans to still be pissed as hell about the outcome.
i'm an adult. i can handle the fact that not everybody sees
the world like me... even if i knew that, without a shadow of
a doubt, i was right.
the ultimate irony is, i bet this jackass and all his cronies sit around
in smoky back rooms whining about what damage the lewinsky scandal
did to us as a country, and on on so many levels, etc, etc.
oh, how terrible. how awful. how morally bankrupt that whole episode was.
what will we ever do?
Medical Diagnosis by Video @ 57:
Impeached and charged and if convicted disbarred, stripped of all worldly goods and cast out into the streets with a voucher for a large refrigerator box in which to live.
Reply to 57:
"And why are people holding Sandra Day O’Connor in esteem, and cavorting with her? She’s one of the anti-democratic five too."
I actually hold her more responsible. Of all the justices who should have allowed the process to continue, she was the most wrong to stop it.
I would love to see Scalia or any of those other justices show up in my town. It would just make my day.
I have only this to say, "Van fan culo, Mr. Scalia."
What's that red patch between his eyebrows? I'm thinking razor burn from shaving his unibrow. Can't see enough of his earlobes to confirm but he does have that fetal alcohol syndrome look about him.
miss_kitty @ 3:
That is supreme asshole... Remember, this mental giant in Bower's vs Hartwick suggested ruled that the state can legislate how consenting adults can have sex. Yes, instead of understanding that implicitly in our constitution is a right to autonomy, he was gung ho for giving the states the right to outlaw blowjobs!
It took over ten years for the states to eventually do the right thing, and get rid of sodomy laws.
I invite ANYONE to read his decisions. For the longest time he was a right wing yes man. Most of his show the mental acuity of a petulant child. His appointment demonstrates that there should be a stronger litmus test for supreme court justices -- say, maybe a MA in philosophy and logic?
lyleleander @ 64:
Wrong!
I oppose the KKK and respect and support their right to hold rallies. I infuriated that abortion opponents have had their right to protest curtailed by the courts.
Go find another tree, this one is not the one you mean to bark up at!
Fat Tony needs to be found in a sorrid affair where there is pics taken and he is shown the pig he really is.
I have doubts this lard ass is 100% straight and I have had heard rumors he likes his ´´hired whores´´ as well.
Clue,, track this bitch down, drop some $$ to find his base and you will see even his most loyal become disgusted and willing to talk about ´´Fat Tony´´!
Smear this prick like he smeard Gore and the constituion. Also ask him if his ancestors came to america legaly!!!
Gonzales cannot answer that.!
because he is not sure.
singe @ 53:
Typical. Offer a completely nonsensical and baseless response, and top it off with ad hominem attacks on the person who posts a view here, just because you don't agree with it. Now I understand where "you" are coming from, "singe"
Yes, tell the families of 4,000+ dead military to 'get over it.' Tell the people of New Orleans to 'get over it.' Tell the citizens of Iraq to 'get over it.' What an arrogant little prick he is. And counts himself a good Catholic -- lying turd.
scalia is a fucking asshole and should not be on the US Supreme Court.
it is obvious that his decisions are biased and too far right of
the American mainstream attitudes. hang him out to dry with
the rest of the gop shit.
Remember Everything. Forget NOTHING.
ferrofluid @ 10:
Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of leftist murderers around. Or would it be considered pesticide?
if it looks like a mobster, talks like a mobster, and acts like a mobster.....
xoites (Bitter Before Country Was Cool) defends Constitution @ 58:
It sort of is, yeah. It's another stretching-beyond-recognition of what courts often do.
It's the nature of the common law that analogous cases get decided similarly. Sometimes, however, courts like to stress that future judges should not be too zealous in using a certain decision as precedent, because the particular facts were very unique. So a decision will be written to emphasize the uniqueness of the circumstances, and point out exactly the kinds of facts that should be present in an analogous case for the instant case to have precedential value.
But how could that possibly be in Bush v. Gore? What? Like we weren't going to run into other vote recounts that potentially violated the Equal Protection Clause? We were never going to find a state whose counties were counting votes differently? It happens all the time! It's either a problem or it isn't.
No, the only thing that made this case unique was the office for which the candidates were competing. And if that's not a political decision, I don't know what is.
Indeed, the "it's not precedent" part of the case was a smug flip-off from the infamous five.
Pure scum
Can we impeach this turd too?
David Wolf @ 70:
Hey do you think we could persuade a state to enact a law making jerking off a crime. (If there isn't one already). A citizens arrest of this total jerkoff would surely be warranted. We'd only need the law for about a day.
Another "Reagan Legacy"
TimV @ 81:
We can. I think Karen can tell us how.
David Wolf @ 70:
My contempt for Scalia notwithstanding, he's a brilliant jurist. I learn a lot from his methodology, and am even a textualist myself. In fact, in criminal defense, I often use his arguments in my clients' favor, and avoid the left-leaning folks like Breyer.
But you're right. When he has a prejudicial notion in his head, he runs wild with it. You think Bowers was bad? Read the sequel! Read his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, the case that overturned Bowers. It is the maniacal rant of a rabid bigot.
Just get over it @ 12: