Barring a Supreme Screwup, It Could All Be Over Soon

He apparently has asked his lawyers to take a direct appeal to the Florida Supreme Court, thereby bypassing the intermediate appellate court in the state's First District Court of Appeal.

Gore's Supreme Court card must now be an ace, as the lower court's ruling has multiplied the force of Secretary of State Katherine Harris' courageous ruling. Why?

Because Gore must prove both that Harris abused her discretion in disallowing the hand recounts and that Judge Lewis abused his discretion in affirming her decision.

The double burden upon Gore's lawyers is matched by the danger to the Florida Supreme Court's presumption of impartiality should it now, in what would be a naked act of judicial activism, overturn Harris, Lewis and, frankly, the rule of law.

For the reasons stated yesterday by this reporter, and now more so than ever, look for the Florida Supreme Court not to go there. Doing so would turn the entire national Republican Party into the "strict construction of the Constitution" party, with the judiciary its public enemy No. 1.

(Gore has an additional problem: time. Asking the Supreme Court to have a hearing and overturn Bush's eleciton after Harris certifies the victory is a psychological load crushing in its weight.)

This ruling today, applauded all the more by this writer because it was unexpected, makes Gore the O.J. Simpson of American politics. O.J. used lawyers to get away with murder. Gore has tried to use lawyers to get away with theft.

The good work of Secretary Harris' lawyers, who happen to be from the heavily Democrat Miami firm of Steele, Hector & Davis – Janet Reno's old law firm! – has stopped this theft nearly cold.

For all that the first Simpson trial did to deconstruct the rule of law in this country, the court ruling today has gone a long way toward restoring it.

This short, national nightmare could soon be over.