Flashback 2004. The Miami New Times reports on shifty Laurence Tribe:
Let's hope Laurence Tribe has a finely honed sense of irony. It was nearly four years ago that Tribe, a Harvard University constitutional scholar, saluted the Florida Supreme Court for ordering a manual recount of our state's now-notorious presidential votes. The court had declared it was duty-bound to "safeguard the right of every voter to express his or her will," and in Tribe's eyes, that was a conclusion so "carefully reasoned" he went on to defend it before the U. S. Supreme Court, touting the wisdom of that legal decision as Al Gore's attorney in Gore v. Bush.There's more:
This past September 17, there was Tribe -- again addressing the Florida Supreme Court, again working on behalf of the Democratic Party. Yet now Tribe had a curious message: Yes, all voters still had the constitutionally protected right to express their wills -- unless they were audacious enough to want to vote for Ralph Nader.
Nader's Reform Party candidacy was a "sham," Tribe argued, and keeping the long-time civic crusader on this November's Florida presidential ballot would be not only "chaotic," but "worse than the butterfly ballot, you'll need a centipede ballot." Tribe added, maintaining a completely straight face, that allowing Nader's name to stand could eventually lead to "a Manhattan telephone-book ballot."
The Florida Su-preme Court was un-moved, and in a 6-1 decision, the same judges Tribe once praised sent him packing back to Cambridge. Tribe remained unrepentant: "For many years Ralph Nader was a hero of mine, but this offends me deeply," he told reporters afterward. "He toyed with the laws of Florida."
"Laurence Tribe is not immune to the role of switch hitter," Ralph Nader explained to Kulchur while in Miami this past weekend, sounding less bitter than resigned to the situation. "I think he was trying to ingratiate himself with the Kerry campaign, possibly for a supreme court appointment if Kerry wins. If you scratch deep enough with these fellows, you hit their autocratic partisan core, which reveals the lack of depth of their principles of freedom."The amazing Laurence Tribe of Harvard.
