Supreme Court Must Scare Gore

What it ought to do is scare the hell out of them. Literally.

Gore's lead counsel, David Boies, confidently predicted, shortly after his win in the Florida Supreme Court Tuesday night, that there was no way the U.S. Supreme Court would review that win.

Friday afternoon, however, upon receiving word that the U.S. Supremes would hear the case, Boies flat-out lied on camera, in response to an interview on the run by Fox's Brett Baier. Boies told Baier he had never said that the USSC would not grant a hearing on Bush's appeal, but rather that he had only predicted Gore would win the appeal. Fox News had fun all afternoon playing Boies' first statement, which he then said, in his second statement, he didn't say.

It reminded this reporter of the time Howard Cosell on a Monday night football game exclaimed, "Look at that little monkey run!" Cosell denied he said it, despite the tapes of the broadcast proving otherwise.

The Boies spin reveals new panic in the Gore camp. For if this is purely a state issue, then why has the highest court in the land agreed to hear the case on federal constitutional grounds?

The Gore team has known all along about the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals case of Roe v. Alabama, which overturned an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that had changed the way votes were counted, after an election. Sound familiar? And that was in a state election, not a federal one. How much greater is the weight of the Bush argument for federal review of a federal election and for the only office in which the candidates are elected by the entire nation?

Gore is in deep trouble this moment. Whereas Florida's Supremes are an activist court for partisan reasons, at least the U.S. Supreme Court has been activist for the purpose, in their minds, of reining in states not compliant with the U.S. Constitution.

The Bush argument that will be heard is that the Florida Supremes violated equal protection, due process, and separation of powers provisions of the federal Constitution. Sounds right to me. And here's a bet that it will sound right to Rehnquist's robed brethren.