PRESTOPUNDIT -- "An intense brain-buzz, guaranteed" (2blowhards)

I know he had a weak case, but did anybody else conclude that Larry Tribe's arguments simply sucked? He falsesly talked of "dimpled" chads being an issue in California -- when they simply are not. He talked as if what people falsely believed -- not what was actually true -- should be the controlling consideration in the case. And his argument seemed (irony of ironies) to come down to a consideration of public confidence in elections -- when the three member court panel decision was crushing public confidence in the judiciary as well as in the election process .. and an en blanc decision upholding that decision would only do far deeper damage to public confidence in the courts and the system. Especially when you consider that the whole decision rested on a bogus study, and Orwellian falsehoods build into the language of ballot "errors" (chosen non-votes, etc.) and "error" rate statistics that where not even final outcome rates. And even these statistics were grossly distorted and misused by the ACLU people. I'm familiar with Tribe's constitutional textbook -- and I'm also very familiar with Tribe's second life as an Alan Dershowitz style partisan advocate who identifies the political result he's after first, and then does whatever it takes to rationalize that result as a matter of "law". I'm sorry, but I'm not impressed. And to my mind it's all of a piece. Leftist jurisprudence is by the nature of the case unprincipled -- it is expediency on moralistic stilts, and it is the enemy of principled liberalism, in my ever so humble opinion. And none of this denies that Tribe knows a lot of case law, and has a good memory, and knows how to put a persuasive argument together. So does Dershowitz, and that doesn't raise my respect for Dershowitz as an advocate one bit.

At a press conference afterwards Tribe said the Ninth circuit judges where "very, very on today". Unfortunately, Tribe was not even close.