Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
This is the 14th amendment to the Constitution of the United States. What does it mean to you? What it means to most rational people, including the people who wrote it, is exactly what it says: the federal government would guarantee that no state could deprive an individual of his constitutionally-protected rights. This somewhat superfluous and manifestly obvious amendment was necessary to ensure that the southern states would not deny newly-freed blacks their rights.
If you know anything about the post-Civil War south, you know that the 14th amendment was worth less than the paper it was written on for millions of blacks for a century; it simply was not enforced, and local southern governments openly and systematically deprived blacks of their constitutional rights. The 14th amendment has been used, however for other designs. The first was a little-studied case with enormous ramifications for the country. The second was the culmination of the crime of the millennium.
The first landmark use of the 14th amendment was not to ensure that southern blacks were allowed to vote; it was to determine that a corporation enjoyed the same legal protection as individual citizens. Since no person could be "deprived of their property", the corporate lawyers argued, it was unconstitutional to limit the property of a group of persons coalesced as a corporation. Henceforth, it would be illegal to limit the size of corporations. The ramifications that this decision has had on our society is literally impossible to comprehend and frankly out of my league to even begin to articulate.
This footnote of history aside, the most recent abuse of the 14th amendment was its incorporation in the crime of the millennium, the coup d'etat of 2000. To prove that George W. Bush did not win the 2000 presidential election is so easy that the case suffers under the sheer weight of evidence. In this sense it is analogous to the O.J. Simpson murder case; any competent prosecutor could ignore 90% of the evidence and still convict.
In the case of the 2000 election, let's clear the table of the mountains of evidence that Bush did not win. Let's forget that he lost the popular vote nation-wide by hundreds of thousands of votes. Let's forget that thousands of blacks were not allowed to vote in Florida because they had names similar to convicted felons. Let's forget that the Florida election was certified by Bush's Florida campaign co-chair, who was employed by both Bush and his brother, the governor. Let's forget that Bush's legal strategy following the voting was focused on stopping recounts, which was, quite simply, an admission that he would be harmed by the truth.
Let's just focus on the Supreme Court's decision to stop the recount and anoint (there is no more appropriate word) Bush as president. What logic did the Supreme Court use in its coup? You guessed it: the 14th amendment. The amendment written to guarantee rights to newly-freed slaves was used by George W. Bush to argue that he was being deprived of equal protection under the law. This is the equivalent of Bill Gates citing anti-genocide statutes in arguing that the Microsoft monopoly should not be dismantled. Does it get any more cravenly cynical than this?
As the Florida recounts progressed, it began to become clear that Bush would lose. His strategy then was to halt the recount at any cost. The recount was not the initiative of Al Gore; it was mandated by Florida law. Bush needed to prevent Florida law from being carried out. But how?
George W. Bush filed suit in the United States Supreme Court claiming that the equal protection of Florida's citizens were being violated. This is a bizarre claim for two reasons. Firstly, the citizens of Florida never asserted that their rights were being violated; George W. Bush took it upon himself to speak for them, to essentially invent a grievance on their behalf. Secondly, the way in which Bush claimed that Floridians' rights were being violated led to an unsustainable conclusion.
Bush claimed that, since the counties of Florida used different types of ballots, any recount would violate equal protection due to different standards in different counties. So, the party of local government came to argue that local government was unconstitutional. Okay. But what was the inference of this argument? Well, the inference of this argument would be that the presidential election itself was unconstitutional, since the thousands of American counties each have their own particular ballots and standards.
This inference, however, was ignored; Bush argued that different standards were fine until the recounts began; once the recounts began, and his lead began to disappear, different standards became unconstitutional in his mind. The Supreme Court of the United States agreed with Bush; they ruled that it was indeed a violation of equal protection under the law to recount Florida's votes. It was unconstitutional, in other words, to objectively discern who won the presidency.
Bush's venal cynicism in bringing the case under the equal protection clause should not surprise us; the Supreme Court acquiescence to a coup d'etat that would make Pinochet blush should surprise us. Here's how blatant it was. In their written briefs, the justices were afforded the opportunity to explain their "reasoning". Antonin Scalia informed us that to continue the recount would do irreparable harm to Bush's "claim" to have won the election. So, Bush's "claim" to have won was so important to Scalia that it must be protected, even at the expense of the truth.
The Supreme Court sets precedence. Stare decisis, it is called. Once a precedent has been set, it takes a very high standard to overturn it. This is why legal segregation lasted so long. It is also why Roe v. Wade is nearly unassailable; it takes alot to overturn a Supreme Court ruling. Knowing this, the Supreme Court justices who handed the presidency to Bush did something that the Supreme Court had never done in its history.
If Bush v. Gore had set precedence, as every single Supreme Court case over the prior two centuries had, what would that precedence have been? Well, it would have read something like this: "Any election with more than one standard for casting and counting votes is unconstitutional, and a candidate's claim to have won an election is sufficient cause to stop counting votes." If this ruling was allowed to become precedent, it would mean that every national election in the history of the country was unconstitutional and that America has never had a legitimate president, since America has never had a president elected by a universal standardized ballot. It would also mean that if, for example, Richard Nixon had claimed to have won the 1960 presidential election (which he probably did, by the way) he should have been granted the office.
Clearly, this could not be precedence, because to do so would literally de-legitimize every election in the nation's history. How did the Supreme Court square this circle? They decided that this case, unlike every single one of the thousands that had come before, would not establish precedence. They decided that their ruling applied to precisely one person in the world: George W. Bush. No future litigant could bring a case under this premise.
Back to the O.J. analogy; this is the equivalent of a judge saying that, since evidence is collected from murder scenes following different procedures in different jurisdictions, and since Simpson claimed to be innocent, any appraisal of the evidence by a jury would violate Simpson's equal protection. This is how Bush became president, by arguing that the truth was unconstitutional. And the Supreme Court agreed. We all know what the results of that decision have been. Could the crime of the millennium realistically have led to anything else?
This is the 14th amendment to the Constitution of the United States. What does it mean to you? What it means to most rational people, including the people who wrote it, is exactly what it says: the federal government would guarantee that no state could deprive an individual of his constitutionally-protected rights. This somewhat superfluous and manifestly obvious amendment was necessary to ensure that the southern states would not deny newly-freed blacks their rights.
If you know anything about the post-Civil War south, you know that the 14th amendment was worth less than the paper it was written on for millions of blacks for a century; it simply was not enforced, and local southern governments openly and systematically deprived blacks of their constitutional rights. The 14th amendment has been used, however for other designs. The first was a little-studied case with enormous ramifications for the country. The second was the culmination of the crime of the millennium.
The first landmark use of the 14th amendment was not to ensure that southern blacks were allowed to vote; it was to determine that a corporation enjoyed the same legal protection as individual citizens. Since no person could be "deprived of their property", the corporate lawyers argued, it was unconstitutional to limit the property of a group of persons coalesced as a corporation. Henceforth, it would be illegal to limit the size of corporations. The ramifications that this decision has had on our society is literally impossible to comprehend and frankly out of my league to even begin to articulate.
This footnote of history aside, the most recent abuse of the 14th amendment was its incorporation in the crime of the millennium, the coup d'etat of 2000. To prove that George W. Bush did not win the 2000 presidential election is so easy that the case suffers under the sheer weight of evidence. In this sense it is analogous to the O.J. Simpson murder case; any competent prosecutor could ignore 90% of the evidence and still convict.
In the case of the 2000 election, let's clear the table of the mountains of evidence that Bush did not win. Let's forget that he lost the popular vote nation-wide by hundreds of thousands of votes. Let's forget that thousands of blacks were not allowed to vote in Florida because they had names similar to convicted felons. Let's forget that the Florida election was certified by Bush's Florida campaign co-chair, who was employed by both Bush and his brother, the governor. Let's forget that Bush's legal strategy following the voting was focused on stopping recounts, which was, quite simply, an admission that he would be harmed by the truth.
Let's just focus on the Supreme Court's decision to stop the recount and anoint (there is no more appropriate word) Bush as president. What logic did the Supreme Court use in its coup? You guessed it: the 14th amendment. The amendment written to guarantee rights to newly-freed slaves was used by George W. Bush to argue that he was being deprived of equal protection under the law. This is the equivalent of Bill Gates citing anti-genocide statutes in arguing that the Microsoft monopoly should not be dismantled. Does it get any more cravenly cynical than this?
As the Florida recounts progressed, it began to become clear that Bush would lose. His strategy then was to halt the recount at any cost. The recount was not the initiative of Al Gore; it was mandated by Florida law. Bush needed to prevent Florida law from being carried out. But how?
George W. Bush filed suit in the United States Supreme Court claiming that the equal protection of Florida's citizens were being violated. This is a bizarre claim for two reasons. Firstly, the citizens of Florida never asserted that their rights were being violated; George W. Bush took it upon himself to speak for them, to essentially invent a grievance on their behalf. Secondly, the way in which Bush claimed that Floridians' rights were being violated led to an unsustainable conclusion.
Bush claimed that, since the counties of Florida used different types of ballots, any recount would violate equal protection due to different standards in different counties. So, the party of local government came to argue that local government was unconstitutional. Okay. But what was the inference of this argument? Well, the inference of this argument would be that the presidential election itself was unconstitutional, since the thousands of American counties each have their own particular ballots and standards.
This inference, however, was ignored; Bush argued that different standards were fine until the recounts began; once the recounts began, and his lead began to disappear, different standards became unconstitutional in his mind. The Supreme Court of the United States agreed with Bush; they ruled that it was indeed a violation of equal protection under the law to recount Florida's votes. It was unconstitutional, in other words, to objectively discern who won the presidency.
Bush's venal cynicism in bringing the case under the equal protection clause should not surprise us; the Supreme Court acquiescence to a coup d'etat that would make Pinochet blush should surprise us. Here's how blatant it was. In their written briefs, the justices were afforded the opportunity to explain their "reasoning". Antonin Scalia informed us that to continue the recount would do irreparable harm to Bush's "claim" to have won the election. So, Bush's "claim" to have won was so important to Scalia that it must be protected, even at the expense of the truth.
The Supreme Court sets precedence. Stare decisis, it is called. Once a precedent has been set, it takes a very high standard to overturn it. This is why legal segregation lasted so long. It is also why Roe v. Wade is nearly unassailable; it takes alot to overturn a Supreme Court ruling. Knowing this, the Supreme Court justices who handed the presidency to Bush did something that the Supreme Court had never done in its history.
If Bush v. Gore had set precedence, as every single Supreme Court case over the prior two centuries had, what would that precedence have been? Well, it would have read something like this: "Any election with more than one standard for casting and counting votes is unconstitutional, and a candidate's claim to have won an election is sufficient cause to stop counting votes." If this ruling was allowed to become precedent, it would mean that every national election in the history of the country was unconstitutional and that America has never had a legitimate president, since America has never had a president elected by a universal standardized ballot. It would also mean that if, for example, Richard Nixon had claimed to have won the 1960 presidential election (which he probably did, by the way) he should have been granted the office.
Clearly, this could not be precedence, because to do so would literally de-legitimize every election in the nation's history. How did the Supreme Court square this circle? They decided that this case, unlike every single one of the thousands that had come before, would not establish precedence. They decided that their ruling applied to precisely one person in the world: George W. Bush. No future litigant could bring a case under this premise.
Back to the O.J. analogy; this is the equivalent of a judge saying that, since evidence is collected from murder scenes following different procedures in different jurisdictions, and since Simpson claimed to be innocent, any appraisal of the evidence by a jury would violate Simpson's equal protection. This is how Bush became president, by arguing that the truth was unconstitutional. And the Supreme Court agreed. We all know what the results of that decision have been. Could the crime of the millennium realistically have led to anything else?
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