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Attorney
Vincent Bugliosi points out in "The Betrayal of America" that the Supreme
Court decision that handed the presidency to George
W. Bush was based "solely on a purported violation
of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment." He quotes from
the opinion of the court in Bush v. Gore:
"The
petition [of George W. Bush] presents the following questions: whether the
Florida Supreme Court established new standards
for resolving Presidential election contests, thereby
violating Art. II, Sec. 1, cl.2, of the United States Constitution and failing
to comply with 3 U.S.C. Sec.5, and whether the use of standardless
manual recounts violates the Equal
Protection and Due Process Clauses. With respect to the equal protection
question, we find a violation of the Equal Protection Clause."
Bugliosi
notes that, because the Supreme Court said it "found a violation" of only
the equal protection clause, the obvious inference is
that the court, "in its per curiam, majority ruling,
did not find that the Florida Supreme Court violated Art. II, Sec. 1, cl.2
or Title 3 of the U. S. Code, Sec. 5." He also explains that appellate
courts, including the Supreme
Court, usually offer a number of different bases for their rulings ("e.g.,
'in addition,' 'moreover,' 'there is a second, independent basis for _____'")
in order to protect the courts
from subsequent attack. However, in Bush v. Gore, says Bugliosi, "the court
clearly knew that its Equal Protection Clause argument was a legal gimmick."
The
court knew the Bush claim that the Florida Supreme Court had established
new standards for resolving presidential elections was "too
much of an embarrassment, even for them,
to reduce to parchment," adds Bugliosi. If that were not true, he suggests,
there could be no other reason for the court, "knowing it was making perhaps
the most important ruling in
history, not to try to fortify and buttress its ruling with these other arguments
in its per curiam majority ruling."
The
reckless, flimsily founded Supreme Court decision, as Bugliosi points out,
showed that the five justices "had absolutely no regard,
no respect, for fifty million Americans, whose
votes for Vice President Gore they knew they were erasing as if never cast;
no appreciation for, nor sense of responsibility to, the majestic and towering
office they occupied; no concern
at all about a betrayal of trust on their part that may be unparalleled in
the recorded annals of American history."
USA
Today reported that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has told friends she has
never seen such anger over a case as over Bush v. Gore (USA
Today, 1/21/01.) Thousands of Americans wrote
letters, and over 500 law professors signed a petition, strongly criticizing
the court's decision. However, Bugliosi correctly laments the fact that public
criticism of the five justices
has been weak considering the nature of their offense.
He
says that when the Supreme Court capriciously took the decision away from
voters and delivered the election to Bush, they acted as
"knowing surrogates for the Republican Party
instead of being impartial arbiter(s) for the law." Instead of searching
openly for the truth, the five conservative justices tried to suppress the
truth, hiding behind the Fourteenth
Amendment's equal protection clause.
In
real equal protection cases, it's the aggrieved party who brings the action,
writes Bugliosi. However, Florida voters did not bring
the action. Instead, Bush "leaped in and tried
to profit from a hypothetical wrong inflicted on someone else." The core
of Bush's complaint was that he himself might be harmed.
Bugliosi
writes that common sense would show that Bush would not have been harmed
if the vote count had continued. The reason is, he
says, is because "just as with flipping a coin you
end up in rather short order with as many heads as tails, there would be
a 'wash' here for both sides; i.e., there is no reason to believe that there
wouldn't be just as many Bush
as Gore votes that would be counted in one county yet disqualified in the
next."
The
only "harm" to Bush that the court wanted to prevent by halting the vote
count, was that "he would be harmed by the truth."
According to Bugliosi, the court was really saying
to voters: "We're so concerned that some of you undervoters may lose your
vote under the different Florida county standards that we're going to solve
the problem by making sure that
none of you undervoters have your votes counted."
The
court majority, after throwing out some 60,000 votes, then had the audacity
to write that its intention was to preserve "the
fundamental right" to vote, says Bugliosi. This is Orwellian
Newspeak equivalent to "war is peace" or "up is down."
Not
only was the "Bush might be harmed" argument bogus, so was the idea that
the equal protection clause applied to the Bush petition.
Bugliosi quotes Georgetown law professor David
Cole on the subject: "[The court] created a new right out of whole cloth
and made sure it ultimately protected only one person—George Bush."
When
the court "cited four of its previous cases as legal precedent," says Bugliosi,
"not one of them bears even the slightest
resemblance to Bush v. Gore." For example, one of the cases
(Harper v. Virginia) was about payment of a poll tax as qualification for
voting. Bugliosi writes that if a first year law student cited
"completely inapplicable authority like
this," his professors would suggest he not waste any more time trying to
become a lawyer.
Yale
law professor Akhil Reed Amar agrees with Bugliosi, stating that the five
justices "failed to cite a single case that, on its
facts, comes close to supporting its analysis and
results." Vanderbilt professor Suzanna Sherry said, "There is really very
little way to reconcile this opinion other than that they wanted Bush to
win." Harvard law professor
Randall Kennedy called the court's decision "outrageous."
Bugliosi
says the only reason no technical, true crime was committed by the five conservative
justices, is because "no Congress ever
dreamed of enacting a statute making it a crime to steal a presidential
election." However, he points out there are two kinds of crimes: malum prohibitum
(wrong because they are prohibited), and malum in
se (wrong in themselves) crimes.
Malum
prohibitum crimes include such things as "selling liquor after a specified
time of day," gambling where prohibited and so forth.
Malum in se crimes include such acts as "robbery,
rape, murder and arson . . . the only true crimes," says Bugliosi. He emphasizes
malum in se crimes all involve "morally reprehensible conduct." Even if
no laws prohibited those crimes,
he notes, they would be wrong and often evil.
Bugliosi
asks, "If what these [five conservative] justices did was not 'morally reprehensible'
and 'a wrong against society,' then what
would be?" He continues, "In terms then of natural law and justice—the
protoplasm of all eventual laws on the books–these five justices are criminals
in every true sense of the word, and in a fair and
just world belong behind bars as much as any American
white-collar criminal who ever lived."
The
fact that there was no legal basis for their decision proves on its face
the justices knew their ruling was fraudulent, Bugliosi
concludes. He writes that those justices knew
that "under Florida case and statutory law, when the Florida Supreme Court
finds that a challenge to the certified result of an election is justified,
it has the power to 'provide
any relief appropriate under the circumstances.' (102.168(8) of the Florida
Election Code."
The
Supreme Court set forth its decision to throw the election to Bush in a "per
curiam" (by the court) opinion. Bugliosi points out
that per curiam opinions are usually issued only
for unanimous (9-to-0) decisions in relatively unimportant cases, or where
justices want to be brief. He notes that USA Today reported that "Neither
was the case here."
In
the 163 pages of "The Betrayal of America," Vince Bugliosi offers vast additional
evidence and consistent, crisp logic, showing
beyond a doubt that the five conservative Supreme Court
Justices committed a malum in se crime, throwing the presidential election
to George W. Bush based on trumped up "reasoning," and stealing the
voting rights of millions of Americans.
Bugliosi
says he considers himself a political moderate, with both liberal and conservative
friends. He makes a distinction between the
extreme political right and a true conservative, defined
by Bugliosi as "one who cares deeply about his country" and one fair-minded
enough to be more concerned with facts than with party loyalty.
The
five Supreme Court Justices, says Bugliosi, had "the highest station in life
and the bluest of pedigree," but at the same time had
"incubating inside of them, the most squalid of
characters, a lowness that may never have manifested itself if they had never
been presented with this situation."
Newsweek,
12/25/00, reported: "Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and her husband
John, a Washington lawyer, have long been
comfortable on the cocktail and charity ball circuit. So at
an election-night party on November 7, surrounded for the most part by friends
and familiar acquaintances, she let her guard drop for a moment
when she heard the first critical returns
shortly before 8 PM. Sitting in her hostesses den, she visibly started when
CBS anchor Dan Rather called Florida for Al Gore. 'This is terrible,' she
exclaimed . . . [Her husband]
John O'Connor said his wife was upset because they wanted to retire to Arizona,
and a Gore win meant they'd have to wait another four years. O'Connor, the
former Republican majority leader
of the Arizona State Senate and a 1981 Ronald Reagan appointee, did not want
a Democrat to name her successor. Two witnesses described this extraordinary
scene to Newsweek."
What
these justices did was "so monumentally base, so extraordinarily wrong,"
writes Bugliosi, that "it would take a Tolstoy, a
Shakespeare, a Hemingway, to give people an illuminating
glimpse into the interior of the soul and marrow of these five justices."
Bugliosi has done a very good job of serving not only as a prosecutor of
unparalleled skill, but also
as a modern-day Tolstoy, Shakespeare, or Hemingway, revealing to the betrayed
American people the character, the deep ethical failing, of those so-called
justices who dealt democracy
its most serious injury in our nation's history.
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The must see video on the "terrorist" flight school in Venice, Fla.
