Herewith a spectacularly stupid piece in Salon, arguing that president Bush has no right to appoint any Supreme Court Justices because he didn’t win the popular vote. Money quote:
To be absolutely clear, my point is not that President Bush can’t make a Supreme Court nomination in this term. It’s that he shouldn’t have to, or failing that, that he just shouldn’t. President Bush holds his office in spite of the democratically expressed will of the national electorate, not because of it. It is not a repudiation of his legitimacy as president to observe that simple point of fact. Whether or not you consider the Electoral College to be a pointless anachronism, in the 2000 presidential election it indisputably led to an undemocratic result: The holder of the nation’s highest office is not the person who got the most votes.
To say that a president is illegitimate is not to repudiate his legitimacy?
CANADIANS SUPPORT MARRIAGE: By significant margins, Canadians support bringing the institution of marriage to all citizens (and non-citizens, for that matter). The Court decision actually reflects popular sentiment. Stanley Kurtz’s notion that the Canadian public is evenly split isn’t true. In only two provinces is there a majority opposed. In most, the margins of support range from 62 percent in Nova Scotia, 58 percent in Quebec, to 52 percent in Ontario (where opposition runs at 44 percent). The trend in the U.S. is exactly in the same direction, as the polls in Massachusetts also show.
The Dish 