What, you mean those recounts also showed Bush winning.

Oh well.

I really dislike bad judges and bad judging.

(ii) No it wasn’t, under the standard enumerated by lefty Justice Brennan in Baker v. Carr. His famous passage on the matter follows, and can be found at 369 U.S. 186, 217 (1962):

“Prominent on the surface of any case held to involve a political question is found a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department; or a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it; or the impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion; or the impossibility of a court’s undertaking independent resolution without expressing lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government; or an unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made; or the potentiality of embarrassment from multifarious pronouncements by various departments on one question.”

While you might be able to invent some argument that elections fall under such a standard, remember that in Baker the Court specifically involved itself in electoral disputes (in that case, apportionment of seats IN A STATE LEGISLATURE, where there wasn’t even a federal concern implicated as there is in a presidential race). Nor will the “textually committed” part help you. Reading Article II section 1 alone might, but the additional rules imposed in the 12th Amendment can, arguably, remove that textual commitment.

Another attempt at arguing for a political question in the case that admits that modern Court jurisprudence leans heavily against it is Rachel Barkow’s article “More Supreme than Court? The Fall of the Political Question Doctrine and the Rise of Judicial Supremacy,” 102 Columbia Law Review 237 (2002). Barkow is more convincing than Tribe, but, as with most legal scholarship, is highly normative rather than positive.

It would certainly help if people actually read through the US opinion — it’s not like it’s classified top secret or anything — and the dissenting opinions as well. While Bush and Gore had their names on the case, the decision wasn’t about them — it was about the state of Florida’s abuse of process. The 5-4 ruling was over the question of whether the “recounters” were partisan hacks (who should give up trying to undo what had been done) or incompetent idiots (who should be given another chance to get it right). The only reason there was a split in the case is because the option of “both” was not available.

look bottom line, the people who voted in florida were dumber than dumb - how do you fill a bubble for a candidate on an OCR form and write in the name too? WHo the hell does not push the stylus thru to punch the chad? ANd dont even get me started on butterfly ballots. It is how the cookie crumbles. Live with it.

Even though the comment immediately preceding yours reminded you that seven justices believed there was a federal equal protection violation, you continue to complain about the “five justices.”

To the extent that your argument rests on your view of who the individual justices wanted to be president, I think it is a losing argument as regards the equal protection issue. Clearly, the two non-conservative justices who found an equal protection violation had no vested interest in making Bush president. The contrary cannot be said of the only two justices, both quite liberal, who rejected the equal protection argument.

I might find your argument more persuasive if you accepted the equal protection violation and simply complained about the decision to stop the recount — a decision that was far more debatable (though, I think, arguably defensible on practical grounds, as Richard Posner has argued).

Of course, this all has little to do with my original point, which related to the L.A. Times’s acceptance of the leftist view of the election — hook, line, and sinker.