Investors Business Daily has a quick retort of the factually-challenged HBO film, Recount, suggesting that Bush stole the 2000 election. What was it Joesph Goebbels said? "...when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous."

Goebbels was attempting to criticize Churchill at that time, but the concept of the big lie -- that saturation and repetition of propaganda will revise memory of factual history -- has been elevated to pathetic heights vis-a-vis liberal romanticizing of the 2000 election.

In all its specific and unambiguous language, the [Florida state] law clearly stated in section 102.111: "If the county returns are not received by the Department of State by 5 p.m. of the seventh day following election, all missing counties shall be ignored, and the results shown by the returns on file shall be certified."

All the U.S. Supreme Court decided was to reaffirm that, according to the U.S. Constitution, the manner in which elections are conducted is up to each individual state and that the will of the people as expressed through the laws enacted by the popularly elected Florida legislature stood and could not be overturned by a Florida Supreme Court legislating from the bench.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says: "The principal issue in this case, whether the scheme that the Florida Supreme Court had put together violated the federal Constitution, that wasn't even close. The vote was 7 to 2." It was Al Gore, he adds, "who made it a judicial question. It was he who brought it into the federal courts."

All the votes were counted, and recounted, and counted again. And not a single recount, either by local boards or major news organizations, found a way for Gore to win. A comprehensive review of 64,248 ballots in all 67 Florida counties by the Miami Herald and its parent company, Knight Ridder, in partnership with USA Today, found that Bush's slender margin of 537 votes would have tripled to 1,665 votes even under the generous counting standards advocated by Gore.

Another review conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the request of CNN, the New York Times and other news organizations found that Bush still would have won Florida even if the U.S. Supreme Court had not ended the nonsense.

In 2000, the election boards of Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties were all controlled by Democrats. The infamous butterfly ballot was designed by a Democrat. The attorney general of Florida at that time was Democrat Robert Butterworth.

Voters were instructed at the polling place: "After voting, check your ballot card to make sure your voting selections are clearly and cleanly punched and there are no chads left hanging on the back of the card."

The fact is, Gore himself requested recounts in only four counties where he thought he might gain votes, not lose them. Gore lost not because Florida was "stolen," but because he couldn't carry his home state of Tennessee, the people who knew him best.

Labels: Bush-Gore, Hollywood bias, media bias, revisionist history