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The Latest Brief

VOTE COUNTERS ARE HURRYING AS CERTIFICATION NEARS.

The Associated Press says, unofficially, Republican George W. Bush leads Democrat Al Gore in the Florida vote by 500.

Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris is expected to certify the Florida vote Sunday night, subject of course to legal challenge.

The US Supreme Court will hear arguments from both the Gore and Bush lawyers next Friday in a suit brought by Bush attorneys asking for nullification of a Florida Supreme Court ruling that Bush says actually rewrote state law by mandating a certification of votes Sunday November 26th, more than a week after state law calls for the certification. It's also claimed the state court action violated the rights of voters.

The Florida legislature has joined the Bush motion before the Court.

The Los Angeles Times reports the high court will focus on an obscure 1887 federal law forbidding the changing of voting rules on or after an election day.

It's unlikely Gore can overtake Bush in the Florida vote re-recounts, according to the Miami Herald.

Republicans have withdrawn a court suit to require reconsideration of about 500 Florida absentee overseas military ballots after a circuit court judge said Thursday he would be "hard-pressed" to come up with a ruling on the issue.

Republicans are now filing actions in individual counties to force reexamination of the military ballots.

Eight-thousand ballots have not yet been re-recounted in Palm Beach County; they're working overtime Saturday night to help get them counted.

Vice President Al Gore is preparing a speech to be delivered sometime Monday. It's likely he will announce that he's "contesting" the Florida certification of votes, with hope of keeping the recounts -- and their results -- alive until the US Supreme Court makes its decision, probably December 5th or later.

Democratic Washington insiders are now saying Gore should concede.

Texas Governor George W. Bush appeared before a huge crowd of supporters outside the governor's mansion in Austin late Saturday afternoon; he waved but had nothing to say to the news media.

Hundreds of Republican protesters appeared Saturday across the street from Gore's residence in Washington; more than a hundred chanted in the rain outside the Broward County courthouse.

Moments later, Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating spoke to reporters in Broward County, Florida; Keating has been watching the recounting of absentee ballots, now calling the process "highly arbitrary and capricious." There are "two Democrat and one Republican judge and he Democrats are overruling the Republican when a ballot seems questionable.

In Broward County, the "official" vote re-recount has ended. Judges are now looking at 500 absentee votes that have been questioned.

Keating says judges are attempting to reason the intent of the voter by checking whether the absentee voted for more Democrats or Republicans, in the manner of voting a straight party slate. For instance, if there were more votes on the ballot for Democrats, the presidential vote, if questionable, goes to Gore.

Saturday evening, Fox News Channel cameras joined Broward County judges in the process of reinspecting absentee ballots; one Democratic judge nudged the other toward the camera, saying "they're looking for a little action. They'll probably just find out how boring this is. We thought about staging a few things, but...that was six hours ago." They're tired. The one Republican judge sat leaned back in his seat, glaring at the process.

The Florida Supreme Court Thursday unanimously ruled that Gore's lawyers cannot force Miami-Dade County to recount ballots that could allow Gore to overtake Bush as the vote-getting leader in Florida and therefore the nation (by an historically tiny margin), putting Gore in the Oval Office.

As of Thursday, the Gore lawyers said they won't accept the certification of Florida ballots even when they're done (by a Gore-petitioned order of the Florida Supreme Court) Sunday.

UPI notes that Gore probably wouldn't have to worry about Florida if he'd taken New Hampshire in the election; Bush took the satate by a small margin, but Green Party candidate Ralph Nader took enough votes from Gore to put Bush there.

A Florida judge has ruled that Palm Beach County can consider "dimpled" or "pregnant" chads, which are apparent attempts by voters to punch holes in ballots.

The US Congress is preparing, in case the Florida court battles aren't concluded by January 5th, to decide the chief executive; on that date the question of electing a president, if not already resolved, will go to the US House of Representatives.

Democratic vice-president-designate Joe Liebermann Friday quoted an ABC News report that an angry mob at Miami-Dade County's aborted vote counting session Wednesday was "orchestrated" by a Republican public relations consultant, implying the "protesters" were paid by the GOP. In adding, "It is a time to honor the rule of law," Liebermann parroted the latest Democratic mantra.

Republican Vice President-designate Dick Cheney is out of a Washington hospital where he underwent "passive interventional" heart surgery Wednesday after complaining of chest pains. Cheney quotes doctors as saying Cheney is up to the job of Vice President.

If Gore loses Florida and therefore the presidency, who becomes the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004? Pollster Frank Luntz says, based on a recent survey, that Hillary Clinton is more popular as a 2004 candidate than Gore and House Speaker Dick Gephardt combined.

FOUR MORE PALESTINIANS were killed by Israeli soldiers, more than 30 were wounded in a series of clashes in Israel Saturday. This, even as hopes were high that cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians could be restored with a negotiated reopening of 10 "liason centers" in Palestinian terrorities, which were closed Wednesday after the killing of an Israeli soldier.

Children appear to be especially vulnerable to radiation emitted by cellular phones because their immune systems are underdeveloped, according to a physicist in the latest issue of the British medical journal The Lancet. A British government panel has called the danger "great enough" that children under 18 should be "discouraged" from using cell phones.

A MAJOR SOLAR FLARE on the sun has been spotted by scientists; they're warning of possible power outages, weakening of TV signals and false fire alarms because of cicuitry power interuptions and static electrical storms as the flare reaches Earth over this weekend, the Sydney, Australia, Sun Herald reports.

A United Nations conference on global warming in the Netherlands, called the "EcoSummit," ended Saturday in acrimony among delegates. No agreement was reached for a compromise on how to reduce man-made gases that some think are the cause of global warming.

Meanwhile, other scientists are challenging the very concept of modern global warming. University of Virginia professor Fred Singer, quoted in the London Telegraph, says the world hasn't warmed since 1940 according to coral reef, tree rings and other indicators. "The hottest years in America were around 1940. We don't know the reason but we don't think it was human activity."

A South African multimillionaire says he plans to float loans and stock to build a new passenger ship to be called Titanic II, which he wants to be a replica of the famous sunken oceanliner.

Legislators in New Mexico say the state may be ready for the legalization of marijuana as a doctor-prescribed medication. The state already allows the use of marijuana in medical research.

A new years resolution already from former Virginia Governor (now US Senator-elect) George Allen: "Beefing up the military budget is high on the list; its essential to world peace."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair trashed the work of a legend Friday; criticizing former PM Margaret Thatcher, Blair said it's "time to move British politics beyond the time of Thatcher." Blair once tried to embrace Thatcher's policies, but recently Thatcher has been critical of Blair's alleged attempts to "sell out" Britain to the European Union. Blair is now negotiating his vendetta.

A man described as a key figure in Citigroup's multi-billion dollar investment portfolio management is out of work after being fired by his father because of what the London Times describes as cocaine addiction. His firing has raised concerns on Wall Street about the use of drugs by high-ranking managers in leading financial groups. The banker has also been linked to an actress in porno films who lists "a sick and twisted mind" as one of her "top turn-ons."

The man who sang the golden oldie "Everyone's Gone to the Moon," Britisher Jonathan King, is being accused by several now-grown men of "child abuse" going back to the 1970s. King is credited with discovering pop rock bands Genesis and 10cc among others. A spokesman for the rich pop presario says King was "shocked" to hear the news.

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Columnist E-GADFLY

"Those who cast votes decide nothing, those who count votes decide everything. -- Joseph Stalin

GO GORE GO!

And please don't let the door hit your heels on the way out.

The time has come for the vice president to throw in the towel, throw up his hands, hang it up, give up the ghost and forget it. It doesn't matter now if he can find enough votes to win Florida, Gore and his smirking legal eagles embarrass America each day the partisan Florida Fiasco continues.

While in Washington and among the elite corps of lawyers fighting on both sides of the Fiasco, the concensus is the battle must conintue; but here in middle America, there is an increasing sense that the whole thing's getting out of contrtol.

Only a tiny majority of people in recent surveys are willing to continue waiting for the outcome of this election -- and the numbers are slipping fast; we're getting tired of the Florida melodrama.

While they publicly continue support for Al Gore's efforts to turn the vote re-recounting tide his way, prominent Washington Democrats are privately calling on Gore to concede the election to George W. Bush.

They're right. Gore's and the Democratic National Commitee's lawyers -- especially new lead attorney David Boies -- appear smug and predatory, opportunisitic and smarmy as they weave laws in and out of each other in an attempt to dig up enough votes for Gore to lead Bush and then win the presidency, while at the same time attempting to paint Republicans as moralist poseurs, just as Democrats successfully painted Republicans as "sexual McCathyists" during President Clinton's impeachment.

I, for one, find the whole Demcratic strategy to be a PR nightmare. Obviously, Gore and his folks don't care about the public relations fallout from their legal wrangling; having the Oval Office is all that matters.

Gore lawyers appear to be waging a states-rights versus federalism fight, yet a third attempt to beat Bush at what they consider to be "his own game;" a scheme aimed at showing Bush (and all Republicans) as hypocrites, based on the Clinton-Gore strategy used during the Clinton impeachment two years ago.

Gore's lawyers have hammered at Bush for having signed vote-recount legislation while governor of Texas, equating that law with the selective recount in Florida, ignoring the wide differences between the two states' laws, in word and in practice.

Gore's lawyers have hammered at the Bush position by attempting to turn the "we're a nation of laws" rhetoric used by Republicans during impeachment against Republicans (used in reference to Clinton's perjury), saying Bush should sit back and watch while Gore lawyers use local Florida laws to beat the federal Electoral College system.

And Gore's lawyers have attempted to use the state's-rights issue (of which Bush is a supporter) against the Republicans by using local laws as a battering ram against the Electoral College system.

Now, Gore's lawyers want to play a Republican-styled Endgame approach to the election, believing that thay still have a chance to overtake Bush in the vote count if they can continue to disqualify overseas military absentee ballots while continuing a "dangling chad" fight to count ballots that were improperly negotiated by inexplicably "confused" voters.

And just as I wrote to you three weeks ago, there is indeed a connection between the Clinton Administration and the Florida vote recount: Charles Ruff, the White House lawyer and friend of President Clinton was assisting the legal team working for more vote recounts in Florida, before he died Sunday.

All the legal pogo-sticking and creative law-breaking going on in Florida has The Clinton People written all over it; the president himself comments on the re-recounts occasionally, always approving, goes to southeast Asia and returns.

If Mr. Clinton and his people were not involved in the Florida Fiasco, he might be expressing some concern about abuses in the process and about the devastating toll the uncertainty of the Fiasco has been visiting on stock markets, which have dropped considerably since Election Day.

A month ago, I wrote in this column that "Bush Must Go With Clinton." Now there are even more reasons, and each day's headlines bring another.

-- E-GADFLY

(E-GADLY is a writer whose work has appeared in print, on television, on radio and even in the movies. But he's moonlighting for The Latest . Net, so if you knew his true name he'd probably be fired from his regular job.)