What happened in 2000 was, in my humble opinion, a cause for civil disobedience on a national scale. Riots, demonstrations, surrounding buildings and keeping the occupants inside until they came to their senses, even more. Had we the bravery that, say, Lithuanians had in 1990, or that lone figure in Tienanmen Square showed so long ago, we might have spared ourselves the ignominy and disgrace of this petulant, recalcitrant, intellectually underemployed, ignorant, bigoted, mendacious, simple-minded moron (who, I might add, half the country identified with - says something). Don't know if we're either capable or willing to recover from the past 7 years of utter cynical evil. Perhaps now would be a good time for an extraterrestrial takeover. (I'm kidding, folks. About the ET, that is, not about the person referenced above.) Maybe we can convince the ETs to take the 5 "conservative" "justices" with them? Especially Scalia and Thomas? The ETs can put them in some kind of display case and label them "mentally underdeveloped semi-humans" or something like that? I can't help thinking that whenever someone identifies themselves as a republican that I feel there's a severe personal deficiency about them, like retardation, or autism.

What happened in 2000 was, in my humble opinion, a cause for civil disobedience on a national scale. Riots, demonstrations, surrounding buildings and keeping the occupants inside until they came to their senses, even more. Had we the bravery that, say, Lithuanians had in 1990, or that lone figure in Tienanmen Square showed so long ago, we might have spared ourselves the ignominy and disgrace of this petulant, recalcitrant, intellectually underemployed, ignorant, bigoted, mendacious, simple-minded moron (who, I might add, half the country identified with - says something). Don't know if we're either capable or willing to recover from the past 7 years of utter cynical evil. Perhaps now would be a good time for an extraterrestrial takeover. (I'm kidding, folks. About the ET, that is, not about the person referenced above.) Maybe we can convince the ETs to take the 5 "conservative" "justices" with them? Especially Scalia and Thomas? The ETs can put them in some kind of display case and label them "mentally underdeveloped semi-humans" or something like that? I can't help thinking that whenever someone identifies themselves as a republican that I feel there's a severe personal deficiency about them, like retardation, or autism.

This book packs a lot of information into very few pages. Bugliosi does a good job of supporting his suppositions with law. There are so many points made, most everyone will be unaware of some of them. The biggest drawback for me was that sometimes Bugliosi strays into name-calling which leads one to begin to doubt if some of the scholarship isn't slanted more than is obvious at first blush.

Bugliosi is one of a kind! He makes his points clearly and effectively. I wish he could take all these so called "justices" to court where he would run circles around them with his startlingly clear reasoning and thinking, ending with them all being dragged off to the nearest prison for treason. A great book to get the juices of freedom flowing again from a great man who truly cares about justice.

I voted for Al Gore in 2000 and wish that he were finishing his second term as President at this time. However, if you put partisan emotions aside and look at the full legal context of that election, it is clear that Bush was the legally elected President.

Article II of the Constitution gives state legislatures the authority to appoint electors to the electoral college, using whatever criteria each legislature establishes. In the early days of the Republic, most legislatures chose all electors themselves, by majority vote. Over time, other criteria were used, until now all 50 states award electors based on the results of the popular vote. With only one or two exceptions (I forget which states), the candidate with the highest popular vote in a given state gets ALL of that state's electoral votes.

For many decades, Florida has followed this procedure to award its electoral votes. But Florida election laws clearly state that the state legislature has the right to set aside the results of the popular vote totals; the legislature may then directly award, by majority vote of all legislators, the electoral votes to whichever candidate it chooses. In 2000, both Houses of the Florida legislature had solid Republican majorities. The Republican leaders of both bodies (and the Republican governor, Jeb Bush), clearly stated that, if necessary, they would call a special legislative session to award ALL Florida electors to George W. Bush.

Had that scenario occurred, here is what would likely have played out. On the day that Congress was scheduled to count the electoral votes, the Gore operatives would have challenged the Florida electoral count. Existing FEDERAL election laws would then have become operative. The Republican U.S. House majority would have awarded the electoral votes to Bush. The U.S. Senate would have voted 51-50 to award the electoral votes to Gore, with then Vice President Gore casting the tiebreaking vote in his favor. Federal law states that if the Senate and House award electors to different candidates, the governor of the state in question has the right to break the tie and award the electors to the candidate he so chooses. The Florida governor in 2000...Jeb Bush, George W.'s brother. In a last ditch effort to salvage the election for Gore, the Florida Supreme Court would probably have tried to use their powers of judicial review to thwart this scenario, by claiming that a state Supreme Court has authority to review all acts of its own legislature. However, the U.S. Supreme Court would certainly have ruled that the U.S. Constitution unequivocally gives the power to select electors (by whichever method it chooses) to state legislatures, outside the scope of state court judicial review - and by more than a 5-4 vote.

So there you have it, folks. Lament all you want over what federal election laws should be, bash the electoral college, lambaste the confusing "butterfly" ballots in south Florida, criticize the flimsy equal protection arguments of the 5 or 7 justices, etc. But all partisan feelings aside, George W. Bush was the legitimately, constitutionally elected winner of the 2000 Presidential election. All other legal reasonings in this book make for nice academic discussions, but are beside the point in any practical sense.

Bugliosi turns a prosecutor's eye to Bush v. Gore and finds the decision not just lacking substance, but a criminal act.

First he deals with motive. All of the 5 justices who chose Bush as president came up through partisan Republican politics. While that's expected (since they come to their positions through the political process), integrity in upholding their oath to support the Consitition has been expected to take precedence. Beyond their partisan pasts and connections, 3 of the 5 had immediate and direct interest in a Bush presidency. Justice O'Connor publically said that if Gore won she'd have to postpone her retirement at least 4 years (so as not to have a Democratic President apppoint her successor.) Justice Thomas's wife, through her Heritage Foundation position was poised to serve on the Bush transition team and Justice Scalia's two sons work for a law firm that handles Bush's legal business.

Bugliosi doesn't say what would happen if we, the non-elite, helped out friends or worked things to our interest through service on a jury, but I'm sure something would.

Next Bugliosi deals with the legal issues. How could the court accept Bush's argument that Bush needed "equal protection" from Gore? That is... the court assumed that Bush won the election and that by counting the votes Gore could take it away from him. Votes, 60,000 in this case, the sacred element of our democracy... the very core of what people fight and die for... were negated as the Court ignored its own entrenched states right biases and regarded time frames as inflexible when complete past practice and case law showed recounts and seating delegates, (with disputes always decided by states and state courts), to be viewed as target dates and not rigid dealines.

On p. 155 Bugliosi has a hypothetical script. He suggests the dialog of the justices and how they came to "reason out" their unsigned opinion that allowed them to pick the president over 50 million voting Americans.

In the early part of the book (written in 2001) he likens this decision to the "preposterous" idea that Republican prosecutors would prosecute only Democrats and vice versa. It was strange that he would mention it, because it was this exact thing that piqued my current interest in this 2001 book.

Mr. Bugliosi's excellent book brings into question the entire operation and philosophy of the supreme court. Perhaps the supreme court should be simply the highest appellate court and leave questions of constitutionality to the judicial committees of Congress. As Mr. Bugliosi points out, there is nothing in the Consitution that gives the Supreme Court the right to strike down federal and state laws as unconstitutional.

This is what I hear, "Get over it", the excuse is a good deversion, but it does not really address what has happened to this nation. We did not have a fair election in 2000, and the biased Supreme Court, was up to it's eye balls in corruption, of a bias nature. No real protests from the "American People". We did not take to the streets ala Vietnam, to make our voices heard.

This is what we get for having a one party legislature, and judicary, and then an excutive branch. Then comes the question of those judges who are appointed for a lifetime. Then career politicians, are another flaw in our freedom armour.

Mr. Bugliosi the DA durning the Manson trials in Los Angeles has very good legal credentials and he did his research before writing this book. He covers the possible reasons for such a blatant intrusion by the Supreme Court, who as the author states should never have become involved in the first place, in what was a state matter. Even though hundreds of thousands of people in the state of Florida were not allowed to vote tagged as convicted felons, when in fact they were not.

No one is responsible for anything any more, or there is always someone there to clean up the mess. Which makes Bush an illegal president. As for those who did not hear it, the same type of deception occured in Ohio, and New Mexico, in 2004, with very little fanfare.

Read this book and see how our one man one vote was a "Joke", and how this right was denied to many of our citizens. How if we allow such a lawless adventure to happen to one of our fellow citizens, eventually it will also happen to us.

I didn't think it was the best book I ever read, but it was interesting. Mr. Bugliosi does not do his best work when he is so angry. The premise of the book is scary, but not hard to believe given the highly partisan society we now live in. Bush haters will love the book!

Vincent Bugliosi has written a good book showing some of the legal issues with the Supreme Court ruling on the 2000 American presidential election. He correctly points out that it is inconceivable that this bogus ruling would have been made had the votes been reversed. It is manifest that the Supreme Court made its absurd rulings to throw the election to Bush. Had all the votes for Bush and Gore been switched, the Court would have done nothing of the sort, and Bush would have won easily.

The author explains that while critics "have lost respect and confidence in the Court," that is hardly a severe consequence for what is in fact a major crime.

Had all the votes been counted, Gore would have been the winner in Florida and in the country, but Bugliosi did not know that when he wrote the book. Nevertheless, the intent of the Court was to commit a crime, and it did so. In addition, election regulations as of Election Day (as opposed to invented ad hoc rulings after the voting) did indeed pay respect to the intent of the voters. Had thousands of Palm Beach voters been fooled by a badly designed ballot into voting for Buchanan rather than Bush, it would have been proper for election officials to try to find a way to take that into account, rather than hand the election to the candidate the voters had clearly attempted to reject. And in that case, I suspect that the officials would have done just that.

Bugliosi does mention that there is a threat posed by such election thefts. Namely, what is there to stop unscrupulous state governments from sending bogus sets of electors to the Electoral College, even if such electors were clearly not chosen by the voters? And what would then stop a partisan Congress or a partisan Supreme Court from "resolving" this issue by choosing a clear-cut loser to be President? Not much. As we can see from the voting in 2002 and 2004, the voters did not punish those who stole the 2000 election. Neither did anyone else.

I do feel, however, that had the Supreme Court not acted, Congress might well have decided the 2000 vote. This in no way excuses the Supreme Court. I have heard some folks say that the Supreme Court did the nation a service by stealing the election, and had it not done so, Congress would have stolen it instead! And that would have been (somehow) worse. I disagree.

Bugliosi also mentions another weird Supreme Court decision, namely the Paula Jones case (involving Bill Clinton). Here, he points out that major elected officials (especially the President) should have civil cases put on hold during their terms of office. It is not in the national interest to have the President partially incapacitated by having to address such legal matters when he has a more serious job to do.

On that matter, the author also discusses the issue of whether it was reasonable to bring up the question of perjury even when Clinton made false statements under oath. The analogy is to denials of guilt by those charged with crimes: such denials are basically never subject to perjury charges even when the accused is found guilty. But I am not so sure I buy it here. I think if Clinton had in fact been totally innocent of anything that was being discussed, he could have told some people, off the record, not to waste their time. But under oath, he should have insisted that he would not support a fishing expedition. I think he needed to find a way to refuse to answer embarrassing questions while serving as President, no matter what the answers were, unless the case were so severe (treason or other high crimes) that it was in the national interest for him to be forced to answer.

Still, the biggest issue in the 2000 voting was not Clinton. It was not even the Congress. It was the horrid misbehavior of the Supreme Court. We need a much better system than the one we now have for counting votes for President. And we need much better checks and balances.

I recommend this book.

Vincent Bugliosi has written a good book showing some of the legal issues with the Supreme Court ruling on the 2000 American presidential election. He correctly points out that it is inconceivable that this bogus ruling would have been made had the votes been reversed. It is manifest that the Supreme Court made its absurd rulings to throw the election to Bush. Had all the votes for Bush and Gore been switched, the Court would have done nothing of the sort, and Bush would have won easily.

The author explains that while critics "have lost respect and confidence in the Court," that is hardly a severe consequence for what is in fact a major crime.

Had all the votes been counted, Gore would have been the winner in Florida and in the country, but Bugliosi did not know that when he wrote the book. Nevertheless, the intent of the Court was to commit a crime, and it did so. In addition, election regulations as of Election Day (as opposed to invented ad hoc rulings after the voting) did indeed pay respect to the intent of the voters. Had thousands of Palm Beach voters been fooled by a badly designed ballot into voting for Buchanan rather than Bush, it would have been proper for election officials to try to find a way to take that into account, rather than hand the election to the candidate the voters had clearly attempted to reject. And in that case, I suspect that the officials would have done just that.

Bugliosi does mention that there is a threat posed by such election thefts. Namely, what is there to stop unscrupulous state governments from sending bogus sets of electors to the Electoral College, even if such electors were clearly not chosen by the voters? And what would then stop a partisan Congress or a partisan Supreme Court from "resolving" this issue by choosing a clear-cut loser to be President? Not much. As we can see from the voting in 2002 and 2004, the voters did not punish those who stole the 2000 election. Neither did anyone else.

I do feel, however, that had the Supreme Court not acted, Congress might well have decided the 2000 vote. This in no way excuses the Supreme Court. I have heard some folks say that the Supreme Court did the nation a service by stealing the election, and had it not done so, Congress would have stolen it instead! And that would have been (somehow) worse. I disagree.

Bugliosi also mentions another weird Supreme Court decision, namely the Paula Jones case (involving Bill Clinton). Here, he points out that major elected officials (especially the President) should have civil cases put on hold during their terms of office. It is not in the national interest to have the President partially incapacitated by having to address such legal matters when he has a more serious job to do.

On that matter, the author also discusses the issue of whether it was reasonable to bring up the question of perjury even when Clinton made false statements under oath. The analogy is to denials of guilt by those charged with crimes: such denials are basically never subject to perjury charges even when the accused is found guilty. But I am not so sure I buy it here. I think if Clinton had in fact been totally innocent of anything that was being discussed, he could have told some people, off the record, not to waste their time. But under oath, he should have insisted that he would not support a fishing expedition. I think he needed to find a way to refuse to answer embarrassing questions while serving as President, no matter what the answers were, unless the case were so severe (treason or other high crimes) that it was in the national interest for him to be forced to answer.

Still, the biggest issue in the 2000 voting was not Clinton. It was not even the Congress. It was the horrid misbehavior of the Supreme Court. We need a much better system than the one we now have for counting votes for President. And we need much better checks and balances.

I recommend this book.

Vincent Bugliosi has written a good book showing some of the legal issues with the Supreme Court ruling on the 2000 American presidential election. He correctly points out that it is inconceivable that this bogus ruling would have been made had the votes been reversed. It is manifest that the Supreme Court made its absurd rulings to throw the election to Bush. Had all the votes for Bush and Gore been switched, the Court would have done nothing of the sort, and Bush would have won easily.

The author explains that while critics "have lost respect and confidence in the Court," that is hardly a severe consequence for what is in fact a major crime.

Had all the votes been counted, Gore would have been the winner in Florida and in the country, but Bugliosi did not know that when he wrote the book. Nevertheless, the intent of the Court was to commit a crime, and it did just that. In addition, election regulations as of Election Day (as opposed to invented ad hoc rulings after the voting) did indeed pay respect to the intent of the voters. Had thousands of Palm Beach voters been fooled by a badly designed ballot into voting for Buchanan rather than Bush, it would have been proper for election officials to try to find a way to take that into account, rather than hand the election to the candidate the voters had clearly attempted to reject. And in that case, I suspect that the officials would have done just that.

Bugliosi does mention that there is a threat posed by such election thefts. Namely, what is there to stop unscrupulous state governments from sending bogus sets of electors to the Electoral College, even if such electors were clearly not chosen by the voters? And what would then stop a partisan Congress or a partisan Supreme Court from "resolving" this issue by choosing a clear-cut loser to be President? Not much. As we can see from the voting in 2002 and 2004, the voters did not punish those who stole the 2000 election. Neither did anyone else.

I do feel, however, that Congress might well have decided this issue in the 2000 vote, even had the Supreme Court not done so. This in no way excuses the Supreme Court. I have heard some folks say that the Supreme Court did the nation a service by stealing the election, and had it not done so, Congress would have stolen it instead! And that would have been (somehow) worse. I disagree.

Bugliosi also mentions another weird Supreme Court decision, namely the Paula Jones case (involving Bill Clinton). Here, he points out that major elected officials (especially the President) should have civil cases put on hold during their terms of office. It is not in the national interest to have the President partially incapacitated by having to address such legal matters when he has a more serious job to do.

On that matter, the author also discusses the issue of whether it was even reasonable to bring up the question of perjury even when Clinton made false statements under oath. The analogy is to denials of guilt by those charged with crimes: such denials are basically never subject to perjury charges even when the accused is found guilty. But I am not so sure I buy it here. I think if Clinton had in fact been totally innocent of anything that was being discussed, he should have told some people, off the record, not to waste their time. But under oath, he needed to insist that he would not support a fishing expedition. I think he needed to find a way to refuse to answer embarrassing questions while serving as President, no matter what the answers were, unless the case were so severe (treason or other high crimes) that it was in the national interest for him to be forced to answer.

Still, the biggest issue in the 2000 voting was not Clinton. It was not even the Congress. It was the horrid misbehavior of the Supreme Court. We need a much better system than the one we now have for counting votes for President. And we need much better checks and balances.

I recommend this book.

I have only read the Nation article that was the original seed for this book, but I will say that it was right on the money. I have read all of Bugliosi's books and articles over the years, and he has never been "political" in his stances. Although it's obvious what he thinks on this issue, he has always been one of those people who follows the Law more than anything else.

For anyone who refutes the idea that the Supreme Court's motivations were political, there is a very simple litmus test. Ask them who they voted for. The answer will be "Bush" every time. The ONLY people who thought the actions of the Supreme Court were appropriate in the Bush vs. Gore ruling, were Bush supporters. Whereas, even many Republicans can agree that the Court acted innapropiately at best, criminally at worst. I have yet to hear a single legal scholar say "you know I wish Gore had one, but I admit that the Court did the right thing and was justified in their actions." If I ever here someone of legal distinction echo that sentiment, I might rethink the Courts actions, but until then, it seems painfully obvious that what Bugliosi says is true...this was a criminal offence performed by the highest court in the land, perpetrated against ALL of us, regardless of who we voted for.

I do find it incredibly ironic that Republicans love to tout the motto of "never forget 9/11" because it was an attack on our very way of life, yet when someone mentions the 2000 election, which was also an attack on our system of government from within (and the most obvious form of "judicial activism") they tell us to "get over it."

The 5 members of the Court who took the lead on this decision have caused a great loss to this country, and should be ashamed. I only hope that we never forget, just how easily the system can be fixed by the High Courts.

A confused and muddled attempt to revise history. The author doesn't present arguments and supporting facts, he presents rants. Footnotes and citations are at best confused, and at worst non-existent. This book should be about one third the length it is - it is full of inappropriate filler.

This book is truly bad. It has no index, it is poorly written it is utterly unedited, it has no logic, it is ad hominum, and it consistantly fails to offer either fact or argument to support its claims.

First the editing problems. It has three chapters. After each chapter it has "footnotes." However the "footnotes" are additions to the text which have been added to the text but not edited into the text. It seems that that a decision was made to rush it to market without a final edit. The book is absurd.

Of the three chapters, the first two are totally empty. Only in the third chapter does the author discussion the issues in the case. The book is based on a 22 page article written for The Nation Magazine. When it was expanded into book length no content was added just filler. The author's manner of arguing is to simply repeat is claims over and over again confusing repetition with argument. The book has the feel of a closing argument aimed at a very unintelligent jury.

The core of the arguement is that on election day in Florida in 2000 more voters wanted to vote for Gore than for Bush and that because of the butterly ballot some 6,000 of them were confused and voted for Pat Buchanan by accident. No evidence is produced to support this contention. Rather Bugloisi repeats and repeats and repeats himself and calls names and names and names and rants and rants and, did I say he repeats himself?

Examples: The author says that under Bill Clinton the US enjoyed a time of prosperity and peace at least six times. Of course it was a time of peace only if one ignores Waco, Ruby Ridge, the Khobar Towers attack (Saudi Arabia) the attack on the USS Cole, the first attack on the World Trade Center, the attack on two US embassies in Affrica, and the war in Kosovo. Off course Bugliosi is arguing to a stupid jury who don't know this.

Every time Erwin Chemerinsky is mentioned we are told that he is a professor at USC. This is done at least three or four times.

The term "Five Conservative Justices" appears in the book at least 100 times. But there are not five conservative justices on the supreme court. There are three. If there were five conservative justices on the supreme court abortion would be illegal as would affirmative action.

Bugliosi applies differing standards on legal issues only governed by whether he approves of the action. For instance the time limits in Florida law are only suggestions which can be ignored at will. (I am an attorney and this argument is a strong one.) However when he is attacking the butterfly ballot the requirements of the law are set in stone. No serious student of the law applies the law in this way.

The final flaw with the book is that Bugliosi ignores are facts which no not support his contention. Having stated that a majority of Florida voters wanted to vote for Gore he fails to deal with the fact that the announcement that Gore had won made BEFORE polls closed in the Florida panhandle (The redneck Riviera to locals) cause upwards of 20,000 voters to not case ballots and Bush was expected to carry two thirds of them. This would have added more than 6,000 to Bushes total.

It is troublesome that in a book extremely short on content the author has decided to ignore the other side of the argument and just call them names. He calls some individuals "mutants."

Bugliosi also states repeatedly that Gore wanted to court all the votes. Of course it was Gore operatives who challenged all absentee ballots case by servicemen. This incidentally is a crime (see 42 U.S.C 1957gg or something near there) for which the penaly is two years in federal prison.

There are a number of books written by conservatives on this matter. We need for balance a book written from the left on this matter. Bugliosi has failed to write that book.

Those who reviewed this book and point out the so-called "fact" that Bush actually "still won" after the newspaper consortium did its hand recount, have bought into the media's burying of the lead on this story.

Read all of almost any article online published at the time about these later results and you will find statements such as this one, from a CNN article:
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/04/04/florida.recount.01/


"Ironically, a tougher standard of counting only cleanly punched ballots advocated by many Republicans would have resulted in a Gore lead of just three votes, the newspaper reported.

"The newspapers' review also discovered that canvassing boards in Palm Beach and Broward counties threw out hundreds of ballots that had marks that were no different from ballots deemed to be valid.

"The papers concluded that Gore would be in the White House today if those ballots had been counted."

Um... What???!

So folks, don't believe it. Bush only "won" because of the obsequiousness of the press and the dishonesty of the people in charge of counting votes in the state of Florida.

This book, and Mr. Dershowitz's book, should outrage every American. It's sad that half this country chooses to ignore these facts. It's sad that democracy has sunk so low.

Molly Ivans' review of this book hits the nail on the head: here is a modern day J'accuse, and that is in part to say that Bugliosi's conclusion, like Zola's, is inarguable. Negative reviewers who point to any ultimate result of the 2000 vote count or re-count giving the election to Bush have missed the point of this book either because they didn't actually read it or were too dim to understand it.

The intricate details of Mr. Bugliosi's book provide an insight to the 2000 stolen election like no other. He exposes the rancid infection of the "felonious five" Supreme Court Justices with wit, humor and a legal mind heretofore unknown in American Jurisprudence. For those planning to vote, it's an eyeopener which will lead them to the right check in the voter's box; and for those just beginning the privilege of voting, it enlightens them to take the path which will protect America's future -- a book which should be REQUIRED reading in high school government classes, and government classes across America's Universities. Mr. Bugliosi provides knowledge of the Bush/Cheney abuses of the Rule of Law and demonstrates the opinion that Bush/Cheney are above it -- and none dare questions it. This review of the 2000 election prepares one for this year's election with the hope of escaping the 2000 election fiasco. It makes one aware, prepared and on guard for any tactics in the 2004 election. We should all be thankful for Bugliosi's insight and courage to expose the betrayal. Absolutely a MUST READ, page turner and can't put down book!!! He makes understanding the law all the easier for those not familiar with its intricacies, and shows how down and dirty Bush/Cheney were in abusing the laws their swore to uphold.

Reader Douglas Cross, like many conservatives, doesn't deliver delivers the whole truth in his statement that the independent review of journalists found that Bush would have won the election had the selective recounts been completed. The key word here is "selective"; the same journalists also found that had Al Gore done the right thing and requested a statewide recount, he would have won the election. There are many unseemly aspects of the Florida election debacle that conservatives are unwilling to confront. One is the very real fact that thousands of voters, mostly black, were wrongfully identified as felons and denied the right to vote. The company that did the search for these felons was instructed to use the loosest possible guidelines, so if a voter's name came close to that of felon, he was identifed as one. Former felons from other states whose convictions had been discharged were also illegally denied the right to vote in Florida. It is also unconscionable that Katherine Harris, who headed Bush's campaign in Florida did not recuse herself from the entire process; but even worse were the failures of both Clarence Thomas (whose wife served on Bush's cabinet selection) and Antonin Scalia (whose son became the anti-labor chief of the Department of Labor) did not recuse themselves despite very clear conflicts of interest.

This is a well written and thought out crtique of the 2000 election mess, however it just happens to be wrong. After the election, several news organizations conducted their own impartial recounts and every one determined that Bush would have won the election had the Supreme Court allowed the selective recounts to continue. The authors obviously know about these recent recounts and chose to ignore them. The truth would ruin the story line.

This one-sided piece of propaganda is perfect for those who still think George Bush lost Florida to Al Gore. Not to mention that the state was called for Gore before the polls closed, thus making Bush lose many votes in the panhandle. But that's besides the point. If Democrats didn't want the supreme court to "name the president," they shouldn't have kept appealing and crying about hanging chads. Obviously the more they pushed the issue, the higher the court that would hear the arguments. Liberals believe hard statutory deadlines are valid only when the Democrat wins. The popular vote doesn't count. The electoral college does. Read up. That's how it works. Otherwise, why would a candidate even visit the "fly over" Midwest states? He would just campaign in NYC and California. Gore lost the election, lost the recount within seven days, and also lost the third manual recount to the point permitted by law. Then HE (not Bush) had the Florida Supreme Court give him a 4th try which he also lost. The democrats did their own illegal recounts a year into Bush's presidency and couldn't find a way to make their boy win. Someone needs to write a book titled "Get Over It!"

Vincent Bugliosi loves our country and for what it has always represented-the people of the United States as a whole. He is outraged that partisan members of the Supreme Court took the right of the citizens of this country, to have their vote counted, away from them. It does not matter who won, it matters that their vote was dismissed and not counted as our constitution says it should be. Also, when you find that over 50,000 people were denied the right to vote because their name was similar to one that was denied because of a prison sentence and that of all those, only about 3,000 were validated and the majority of them were people who were more likely to vote for Gore, then you know there was a gross miscarriage of justice. No one should be denied to vote unless it is positively proven that they should be denied. It doesn't matter which party did this. I would much rather have let those people who shouldn't have voted vote than to deny the rights of the others. This is not something we should get over, this is something that should be looked into and not allowed to happen again. Our constitution should be upheld and the Patriot Act that denies our civil rights should be banned so that our civil rights are not in jeopardy. Fascism (dictatorship) is coming closer to a reality and the people need to put a stop to it. Also, as Bush's brother was governor and Harris, a strong supporter of Bush, they should have arranged a more non-partisan group to oversee the election. And the Supreme Court judges, definitely, should have been non-partisan, but there shouldn't have been any Supreme Court people in the first place.

Great book. A previous reviewer said the Supreme Court's ruling was 7-2, thus nullifying the main argument of this book. Unfortunately the reader is misinformed, a common occurrence today due to people not researching information prior to making a statement about it. The truth is although the ruling reflected a 7-2 split, the concurring and dissenting opinions revealed a 5-4 split along ideological lines, with the conservative faction ruling against the recounts and the liberal wing arguing the case lacked merit and the recounts must continue.

The 7-2 split was over the question of reversing the Florida court, but the 5-4 split was over the termination of manual recounts. This termination effectively appointed GWB as our next President, thus depriving Florida voters their constitutional right to have each and every vote counted.