Sandra Day O'Connor

Don't praise this traitor who put George W. Bush in the presidency when she knew perfectly well he lost the election. Shame on you OP

R1 Actually, SCOTUS just stopped the recount. Three or four well financed auditing firms did a recount a few times and they ALL concluded Bush won.

Remember, O'Connor was horrified by the Bush Administration, the downfall of her friend Donald Rumsfeld, and called John Ashcroft the worst thing to happen to the Republican Party.

False R2. You lie like a rug. NO RECOUNT showed Bush as winning. O'Connor was friends with Rumsfeld, who financed Qadafi so yeah her judgement was bad, and Judgement is what is most important in a JUDGE.

And he tried to sell nuclear reactors to North Korea as well. A real charmer.

She must be almost 100 now.

She came from Arizona, where corruption has been normalized.

The recounts all showed Gore won. The Republicans stole the election and we got W Bush, one of the worst presidents in history.

I know it's ancient history now, but I'm still fucking mad and bitter over the 2000 election. I know, "get over it." I've never been able to do that. We had 8 years of complete fuckery with Bush and Cheney.

The GOP, its poisoning of the DOJ/FBI between 2015 and 2020, its SCOTUS and its foreign interests have stolen presidential elections twice.

The GOP needs to be broken.

And Sandra Day O'Connor was typical of her party. She sided with the GOP when it mattered. Fuck her memory.

The 2000 decision was 7-2. Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, and Breyer were in the majority. Ginsburg and Stevens dissented.

The actual lawsuit was over the Equal Protection Clause and the recount was unfair because of the WAY the officials were counting, giving different standards to different ballots, plus a myriad of procedural issues.

R7 the recounts did not show Gore won.

The recount was stopped. Had it been allowed to continue, Gore would've had more votes.

[Quote] The recount was stopped. Had it been allowed to continue, Gore would've had more votes.

That's not the way I remember it.

It was stopped. No one knows who actually won. And that is the crux of the problem.

As for O’Connor, she knew when to get out. I wish RBG and Kennedy had done the same.

She was a cunt.

She gave us George Bush and regretted it for the rest of her life., which was a fitting reward.

The recount was stopped even though under Florida law it was supposed to be automatic. The Supremes engaged in blatant fraud.

I actually spent several days with her years ago for a project and she was lovely. I don’t think she was the hardened Republican Reagan had thought he appointed.

She was quoted at the time of Bush v. Gore, regarding Bush possibly losing the election, saying something like, "We can't let this happen."

Several audits concluded Bush won. These "Gore won" posts are DLers re-writing history.

She was also a swing vote to the majority on several controversial cases- Planned Parenthood v Casey, Lawrence v Texas, Grutter v. Bollinger, and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld.

She retired to take care of her husband, who had Alzheimer's. When he passed away, she traveled the country promoting civics education with David Souter and Richard Dreyfuss.

Bush did not win, Gore would've won if the ballot counting hadn't been halted.

Folks like Marion Cantone etc. who publicly read celebrity autobiographies for laughs

&/or shocks should read awful supreme court opinions with flair & sarcasm for shits & kicks.

I'd love to see her original opinion on sodomy shortened for a few public laughs & shocks.

False R20. You keep lying, but you can' change history. GWB is a psychopath and a traitor.

I wish she was on the bench now. She would have a lot to say about DJT

Bump

[quote]I wish she was on the bench now. She would have a lot to say about DJT

R24 - She's one of the reasons we eventually ended up with Trump as President. She was big into legislating from the bench.

The Stanford troll is back.

“they ALL concluded Bush won…”. “audits…” blah, blah.

Under what standard? The one SCOTUS randomly applied, the one the Florida SC intended to apply, the actual vote count or something else?

OP is a troll.

This rancid GOP cunt handed Bush the presidency in a bloodless coup.

Well, not so bloodless. The same craven GOP political types have now overwhelmed SCOTUS with even-lower standard, corruption is rampant, the Court is above the law, and, oh, yes, Cheney's control of the military and the Oval Office handed us the deaths of many thousands. American veterans remain marked, maimed and dead from Sandra Day O'Connors' insipid arrogance.

R10 - don’t lie.

The decision was 5-4

R10 and R30 are both right.

It was 7-2 (Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, and Breyer) about the Florida court’s order of a manual recount. They ruled it was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment

Then it was 5-4 (without Souter and Breyer) that said the recount would be unconstitutional because the recount could not be done within the pre-established federal safe harbor deadline.

^ the 5-4 vote is the controlling authority, the rest is dicta.

R30 trumps R10 on substance

And the motherfuckers said their decision was not to be taken as precedent—a breathtaking assertion that gave the game away.

R33 I think Kennedy, Breyer, O'Connor, and Souter regretted voting that way.

Otherwise, Thomas, Rehnquist, and Scalia would have been the dissenters.

She voted to stop the recount and let Bush win because she wanted to retire and didn't want to be replaced by a Democratic president. Ultimately she retired early in Bush's second (stolen) term and was replaced by the unprincipled reactionary Samuel Alito.

O'Connor's behavior in Bush v. Gore was unconscionable. The consequences of her vote in that decision outweigh everything else of positive import she may have done from the bench.

To clear up some misconceptions about "who really won", here's an extended passage from Jeffrey Toobin's "Too Close To Call: The 36-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election":

[quote]A joint study of some 64,000 ballots by USA Today, The Miami Herald, and the Knight Ridder newspapers sought, initially, to answer the first question: What if there had been no stay? This study examined only undervotes; it did not include the ballots in the seven counties that had completed their manual recounts by the time the Supreme Court entered its stay or those precincts in Miami that were recounted before the local canvassing board decided to stop all counts. Under three of four scenarios, Bush won this recount. If the standard for counting ballots was lenient—that is, dimples allowed—Bush won by 1,665. If the standard was similar to that applied in Palm Beach, Bush won by 884. If two corners had to be detached, Bush won by 363. Only by a strict standard—fully detached chads required—did Gore win, and by a total of only 3 votes.

[quote]At first glance, these results are curious: The Gore forces were always fighting for a lenient standard, and it now seems that Bush would have prevailed under such a rule. But this apparent anomaly can be explained by examining the counties that were not included in the study, which were the most Democratic areas in the state—all of Broward and Palm Beach as well as the northern part of Miami-Dade. If these areas were included—that is, if the undervotes in all sixty-seven counties were examined—then the race shifted in Gore’s direction.

[quote]A later USA Today, Miami Herald, and Knight Ridder review of 176,000 ballots, including 111,000 overvotes (mostly from optical-scan machines) helps to answer the second question: What if there had been a true statewide recount? Here, Gore did better. Under the lenient standard for a statewide recount, Gore won by 393 votes; under a Palm Beach approach, Gore won by 299; under a two-corner rule, Bush was the winner by 352; under the strict test, Bush won by 97. In other words, when the recount included the seven-plus mostly Democratic counties, Gore won under two of the four standards.

R22, O’Connor wrote an autobiography in which she talks about growing up on a sheep farm and describes personally biting the testicles of rams with her teeth to geld them. It was one of the biggest WTF! moments I’ve ever had while reading a biography.

She was a pampered rancher´s daughter… don’t be too impressed.

A manual recount of all the Florida counties would have most definitely given the win to Gore. Stopping the recount was a bad faith approach to determining the factual winner.

^ But the Gore campaign didn’t ask for a recount of all the counties. Just the most Democratic ones.

R40 Because of the supposed issue with the hanging chad on the ballots, the Gore team took a strategic approach that a recount of just 4 counties of Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade would be sufficient. I knew even in real time that because of all the voter suppression that was going on, there was no guarantee that Gore would add enough votes to the tally in just the 4 counties . A recount of the state would have given Gore a sizeable win over Bush. If the Supreme Court were being objective and just arbiters they would have said that a full state recount is necessary to make the count legitimate. But that was never their intent because Bush had the slight lead.

And, to the likely surprise of even those who would know of her, she’s still alive. Much like Joanne Woodward.

Yeah, the Gore legal team would have been of firmer political grounds had it sought a statewide recount.

The Bush-Gore "thing" happened back in the days when the Supreme Court DIDN'T believe in leaving these matters in the hands of the states and were loathe to control states' "authoritah".

Loath, R44, not loathe.

I'd rather have her than the Trump bullshit

She put an unelected psychopath in the White House. Her memory is forever tainted.

Some of you are keen to blame the victims of a fascist putsch which happened because of her in January 2001.

She was living proof that women can be just as greedy, selfish, stupid, incompetent, and disgusting as men. A true pioneer for gender equality!

I never saw a picture of her with hair before!!!!!! Great singer.

Fucking bitch that helped lead us down the diaper soaked garden path to Trump. May she rot in hell for all eternity.

OP is probably also the "Condoleezza Rice is fabulous" troll.

R16 she isn't dead.

Most Famous Traitor to the United States 🇺🇸 of America

[quote]broke the glass ceiling for women everywhere

Everywhere? France? Angola? India? Peru?

What's with these Dataloungers praising right-wing cunts who supported some of the most corrupt Republican administrations in the history of the country?

Despite breaking ground by becoming the first female Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O'Connor's legacy will not be fondly remembered once she passes away.

Sandra Day O’Traitor

I read that as Sinaed and thought her official COD came in.

She's still alive?? I could have sworn she kicked it years ago.

She as only put on the court due to a promise Ronnie Raygun made to his left wing daughter to promote more women as Prez. I recall she was a democrat (like Nancy).

58 replies & no mention of her horrible bigoted anti-gay decision on sodomy that had to be overturned later?

An amazing woman OP? Go f*ck yourself.

Nancy Reagan was a Democrat? I thought she was a right winger like her father.

R59 she changed her views, like in Lawrence v. Texas

O’Connor was picked by Nancy’s father Loyal Davis, who was probably the most important political adviser in Reagan’s life before he died in 1982-he’s the one that converted Reagan from an FDR Democrat o hard right-winger:

Loyal and Edith Davis retired to Arizona and were active in politics there, which is where they met O’Connor.

O'Connor was never really a Reagan-esque Right Wing Evangelical Republican. She was part of the Goldwater Libertarian movement of the late 1950's/early 1960's.

She was appointed because she was a Republican female judge who was friends with Bill Rehnquist.

Besides Bush v. Gore, what else does DL not like about her?

I’m not sure which troll has volunteered to slowly “rehabilitate” historical Republicunts here, but I’ve had sufficient. This demented cuntress installed cocaine brain “W” in a soft coup d’etat. She voted to stop the count. Pure partisanship. Enough with the revisionist history!

Horrible woman who helped accelerate the republican party's drift to the far right with her fake "moderate" image. She was just as nasty, homophobic, and hateful of other women as MTG. She was just smarter and better at hiding her monstrosity.

She is to woman what Clarence Thomas is to blacks

R64 Bowers vs Hardwick 1986

There’s no “besides Bush vs Gore”

R68 Wow. She changed her mind and was also in the majority in Lawrence v. Texas. In fact she wrote a concurrence stating it should be based on Equal Protection, which would give courts higher scrutiny when analyzing cases.

Moderate = wishy-washy. She was too soft on the law. She needed to be willing to be harsh and follow the Constitution and let the chips fall where they may.

Once more, R10 is a trolling shit and apologist for right-wing thievery under cover of bad constitutional decisions.

The per curium decision was a 5–4 vote, as the Court ruled, strictly on equal protection grounds, that the recount be stopped.

Souter was so outraged he considered quitting right then and there, but waited for a while.

Quit trying to change history, Mme. Putin-Trump.

O’Connor wanted to retire and thus wanted Bush to win.

Wasn’t she supposedly heard lamenting that she had to work 4 more years at an election night party in 2000, when the early returns from Florida indicated that Gore was going to win the state?

The problem with Bush v. Gore is that it was so close, if it didn't go to the Supreme Court, Florida could have been gridlocked for weeks.

The state might have chosen two sets of electors; the one already certified by the Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the other the product of the recount ordered by the Democrat-controlled State Supreme Court. With both candidates claiming Florida's elector votes, the election would go to Congress... (statute 3 USC sec. 15):

The Republican House would have voted for Bush electors.

The Democratic Senate would have voted for Gore electors.

When the two houses disagree, the slate certified over the governor's signature would prevail. The governor of Florida was Jeb Bush, W.'s brother. In short, the fury and "cheated election" would have gone on and on...

[QUOTE]She voted to stop the count. Pure partisanship.

And self-interest. I was about to post the same as r73. Yes, she was. Her husband had developed Alzheimer's and she wanted to return to Arizona.

What is ironic is that she ended up voting against the Bush Administration for their handling of everything.

This is a good biography of her.