Paul Begala Is A Fascist (Or At Least Sounds Like One)

There I said it.

Saddest part is its true. Fasicsts have no respect for actual democracy either.

What am i talking about? Compare and contrast:

Begala: You know you're low when you have lower ethical standards than a convicted felon, but that's where former Sen. Norm Coleman finds himself.

Wow. Coleman is now as bad as a felon! Why is that?

Castellanos: As Michael Stokes Paulsen, a professor of law at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis wrote in The Wall Street Journal, there is a lot in the recount affair to concern us. Franken has exploited a weakness in almost every state's recount process.

Recounts, Paulsen observes, must not violate the 14th Amendment, which provides that "no state shall...deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The Constitution suggests it is a matter of some importance that votes be counted uniformly in a democracy.

The Supreme Court's "Bush v. Gore" 2000 decision reaffirmed the equal protection clause: Ballots in one precinct or county must not be evaluated differently than those in others.

Recounts, however, are conducted locally, with individual precincts and counties interpreting state election laws. The result in Minnesota is a crazy quilt of newly evolved standards that, in fact, have become no standards at all -- and are constitutionally unacceptable. All votes are meant to get equal protection in Minnesota, but Franken's votes are getting more equal protection than Coleman's.

In some parts of the state, as a Wall Street Journal editorial observed, recount officials have accepted Franken votes tallied on election night, even when the physical ballots were nowhere to be found for the recount.

Let's say, through error or design, some overly enthusiastic election night official fed Franken votes through a voting machine twice: In some parts of Minnesota, Franken kept those votes, even though they could not be re-tallied.

In other jurisdictions, the election night tally was thrown out and Franken got to include votes he didn't have election night but his team subsequently discovered. Availing himself of dissimilar standards in different parts of the state, Franken got to pick which benefited him the most, the election-day tally or the recount.

It's amazing, Al Gore drags the 2000 election all the way to the Supreme Court and Democrats laud him as a freakin' hero. But if Norm Coleman contests an election, well, he's basically a criminal.

So now it is criminal to have a fairly conducted election, if you don't belong to the one party deemed acceptable to Paul Begala.

Gee, that sure sounds like fascism.