"It took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue," she told the Chicago Tribune editorial board in an interview on Friday. "Maybe the court should have said, 'We're not going to take it, goodbye.'"

From the Tribune:

The case, she said, "stirred up the public" and "gave the court a less-than-perfect reputation."

"Obviously the court did reach a decision and thought it had to reach a decision," she said. "It turned out the election authorities in Florida hadn't done a real good job there and kind of messed it up. And probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day."

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Gore continued: “If we as Americans honor the rule of law, then we obey the law ... The fact that it was taken up by the Court and decided by the Court in those circumstances meant that it had the force of law. And ultimately that is not an easy choice, but it's a choice to which there is no viable alternative. And I decided to honor the rule of law.”

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It’s lucky that was the case, because the federal commission tasked with making elections function better has been stymied by partisan infighting that has left it with zero commissioners, with Republicans refusing to appoint new ones and blocking Democrats from doing the same.

Congress created the U.S. Election Assistance Commission with the passage of the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which allocated over $3 billion to help states improve their election administration and enacted a number of reforms aimed at preventing another debacle like the presidential election of 2000. The act passed with rare and overwhelming bipartisan support -- the House voted 357-48 in favor and the Senate 92-2 -- but the honeymoon didn’t last long and the commission soon fell victim to the partisan bickering that has hamstrung the Federal Election Commission.

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The sketch ends by showing Farajin and his "Watan ala Watar" colleagues one year later, silently clowning around, suggesting that even if Mughani and his government cohorts muzzle them, that won't stop the comedy crew's high jinks.

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But it's still totally OK to hate the guy.

Seriously.

Seven months ago the guy introduced a bill that would automatically strip Americans of their citizenship if they were charged with "a terrorist act." He named it "the TEA Act." Why did he do that? Because he's a political troll. Not in the "living under a bridge eating goats" sense, but in the old Usenet sense of someone who purposefully enrages and frustrates members of a community, while pretending to have no idea what he's doing.

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An earth tones joke. In the year 2010.

The "earth tones" thing was a completely fictional story invented, almost simultaneously, by the entire 2000 campaign press corps, because the narrative everyone had decided on was that Al Gore was a phony and a wacko weakling liberal loser. MoDo led the charge, and has clung to that caricature, despite its basis almost entirely on complete fabrications, ever since.

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So I thought I'd try to blog my review, over several days, and ask for your help, if you're reading the book. Every few days I'll write about what I am learning, and anyone who's reading, or curious, can participate in comments. (We could do the same thing with "Going Rogue" next month, but it would probably take us about an hour.)

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The past few years my personal life has taken a nosedive. I think the biggest factor is this anger I've got inside, which frequently prevents me from socializing and meeting new people (or just having a good time with people). Basically I've become a very grumpy middle-aged man.

This all basically started after the 2000 election. By now, I feel justifiably disgusted by the Bush administration and his supporters of course, but it's bigger than this. I also feel my fellow Americans the past two decades or so have been awash in gleefully/mindlessly practicing the seven deadly sins, of which I believe ignorance should be added as the eighth.

Anyway, I know some people go to anger management therapy but I'm not sure that is for me. You associate that type of therapy with people who have snapped, people who have abused people physically as well as verbally. My anger is merely my own; I don't lash out; I just despair, because I know lashing out would cost me (my job, family, friends).

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The creed goes like this: The senator from Illinois (who is just about to put the finishing touches on a victory over the senator originally from Illinois) will inspire record numbers of African-Americans, independents and voters under 30 to go to the polls this November, sweeping away all before him like Peter O'Toole riding into Aqaba.

The African-American part seems pretty solid. The number of black voters will grow, and Obama will outperform previous Democratic candidates among them, perhaps enough to help him by 2 percentage points or more in states such as Virginia and North Carolina and a crucial 1 point -- give or take -- in other battleground states like Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri.

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Monday morning -- first on the "Today" show and then at an early morning press conference in Hillsborough, N.H. -- Lieberman will endorse McCain for president. It is a fitting match of Iraq war supporters and longtime globetrotting colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee. There is also the poetic parallelism that Lieberman (who still bills himself as an "Independent Democrat") is now signing on with a candidate who is also seeking the nomination of a political party that may no longer exist -- Republicans who have not gone off the deep end on immigration, global warming, torture and religion.

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As a result, on December 16, 2000, three days after Al Gore conceded defeat, Colin Powell was flown to Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, where the president-elect announced his first cabinet appointment: Colin Powell as secretary of state. "He is a tower of strength and common sense," said Bush. "You find somebody like that, you have to hang on to them. I have found such a man."

Tears filled Bush's eyes. "I so admire Colin Powell," he later explained. "I love his story."

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The collapse of the effort seems to represent a Florida-style cooked-election bullet dodged. But our democracy won't be safe until we disarm the weapon intended to fire such bullets.

It's time to abolish the electoral vote system. We should do it now.

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The sudden fashion for favorable comment won't influence any thoughtful American's opinion of Gore, but it should remind us of the dismal media performance that did such a terrible disservice to him and to the nation. Although Gore himself certainly deserves a measure of blame for the catastrophic conclusion of the 2000 presidential election and the events that led up to it, his hateful treatment by the press slanted the campaign against him from the beginning. (Perhaps only Ralph Nader is more culpable for the irreparable harms of the Bush era, but that is an arguable proposition.)

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The Lieberman campaign is trying to frighten white voters in Connecticut -- and Democrats in Washington -- by reminding them over and over again that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson support Lamont. This week, the senator's aides told the New York Times that playing the two African-American preachers off against Lamont will enhance Lieberman's appeal on an independent ballot line. "Primary night was the first time that many Connecticut voters saw Lamont on TV, and he's surrounding himself with two of the more divisive and problematic figures in the Democratic Party," said Dan Gerstein, the Lieberman campaign's communications director.

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During a speech in New York last night, Scalia said that he and his fellow justices intervened in the 2000 election because Al Gore made them do it. "The election was dragged into the courts by the Gore people," Scalia said. "We did not go looking for trouble."

As a general matter, of course, nobody can drag the Supreme Court into anything. As Supreme Court Rule 10 says, "Review on a writ of certiorari is not a matter of right, but of judicial discretion." Scalia and his colleagues used that discretion to grant review in a case brought not by "Gore's people" but by a man named George W. Bush.

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But 2008 will be upon us before we know it, and the Electoral College will be large and in charge again. Donkey Rising points us to a new study from FairVote on the toll it's taking on American democracy. Because the Electoral College system puts the emphasis on winning states, not votes, the race for the presidency of the United States plays out almost exclusively in the states that could conceivably be up for grabs. With each election cycle, that battleground gets smaller. In the 1960 presidential election, FairVote says, 24 states were highly competitive. By 2004, the battleground had shrunk to 13 states, and FairVote says it will get even smaller by 2008, when the only large states in play may well be Ohio and Florida. If a Republican wins both, the Republicans will hold on to the White House for four more years. If a Democrat can get at least a split, it's game on.

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1. "Well, all you can really do is give money." So that's the end of that. At my age, a lot of people are tapped out. Kids in college. Parents in assisted living. But is it true that giving dough is the only thing we can do?

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With his February announcement that he would mount a third bid for the presidency, this time as an independent, consumer advocate Ralph Nader cemented his status as the other guy the Democrats love to hate. But it's not just Democrats that question his motives. With the 2004 presidential election shaping up as an apocalyptic, scorched-earth showdown between two major parties vying for the allegiance of an evenly (and deeply) divided country, Nader's decision elicited an explosion of anger in many of the liberal and progressive circles from which Nader drew his past support.

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