Some of you have been on this site for over a decade.

[Samantha]

359. There were two very dramatic moments I always will remember

There was a movement to impeach the Supreme Court 5 who threw the 2000 election to Bush. If you are a DU member, you probably know almost all of us thought that was a political decision and one that should never have been rendered. The press conference announcing the movement to impeach the 5 judges that threw the election was scheduled to be held at 5:00 in front on the Supreme Court. The day of the announcement: September 11, 2001. And so history of that day's events eroded the movement scheduled to launch that day to hold accountable the 5 Supreme Court judges that handed the Oval Office to George W. Bush*.

We learned many things from that 2000 election, not the least of which was the mechanics of how to actually manipulate the results of voting. I knew nothing about that subject until I started following the 2000 election 2 to 3 hours a day during 1999 and 2000, spilling over into 2001. I learned so much, as did so many others here.

In 2004, when many of us were outraged over what had happened in Ohio, giving the election once again to George W. Bush*, we sat up the night before the Electoral College was to vote. The outrage over the manipulation of that defining vote was palpable here. That specific night, in one thread, many people relayed incidences that alone justified an official investigation. One of these was when the electricity went down at one key polling place, the totals at that time had been observed and noted here, but when the electricity came back on, whoa...the numbers did not jive.

While at the criminal acts were being relayed and speculation was posted about what would happen the next day, for instance, would there be any protest speeches when the vote was hold, I remembered some advice by Jonathan Turley given a short time before Bush's first inauguration and put that with some words of David Bois in Courting Justice, written after the 2000 election. I started this thread at 12:11 on January 6, 2005, and the political electricity started sparking. Eventually, one poster faxed it to 20 senators and another emailed it to 29 press outlets. The discussion continued throughout the day and was fascinating. It was a good-faith effort at stopping the Electoral College from "giving" the election to Bush, despite the election tampering in Ohio, the determining state.

Several Democratic Senators were scheduled to speak the next day prior to the vote, and we knew they had the information. The truly interesting thing was not everyone who had been scheduled to speak, actually spoke. Some not scheduled to speak, suddenly did. But despite the best of efforts to stop that vote, you know how it unfolded. But the important thing here was knowing we could all come together to make a difference. From each experience, we learn more and improve both our defensive maneuvers as well as our attacks.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x244396

Other experiences I will NEVER forget are: accidentally meeting Helen Thomas in a restaurant one day and posting about the experience here, attending a book signing by Al Gore and sharing that here, meeting Richard Clark twice at book signings and writing about those events here. Those were the days....

Sam