13JAN2001 Rarely have lefties scored a knockout punch on right wing goofball radio or TV talk show hosts. That's exactly what happened Friday night on Fox TV's Sean Hannity program, LIVE!

Hannity is a lightweight in the first place, and anyone representing the left is handpicked by the Fox network to make their stable of rightwingers look good. They mistakenly included Bernie Ward in their Friday night broadcast.

One of two things will happen in the future as far as Bernie Ward is concerned; either he'll never be asked back or he'll never be asked back, for emerging as the quickest and most articulate white talk show host on television or radio.

Ward effectively made his case against John Ashcroft, but in doing so he also buried Hannity. Both Hannity and Ward are Catholics, but only Hannity has to look the other way where Ashcroft's relationship to Bob Jones University is concerned. Ward blasts Ashcroft for a laundry list of socially irresponsible interaction with the Bob Jones degreed racists and bigots, and Ward blasted Hannity for saying, "Duh, duh, duh..."

Rejecting hand-counted ballots helped Bush win

In her first interview since she landed in the center of the most bitter presidential election in modern memory, Harris denies any wrongdoing, partisanship, or abuse of discretion in her moves to certify George W. Bush as the winner of her state's contested vote.

"I followed the law," she tells ABCNEWS' Diane Sawyer. "Before God, before the law, before the people of the state of Florida who elected me, I know that I followed the law."

Harris, a Republican and a co-chair of the Bush campaign in Florida, emphasizes that she is an independently elected official - not an appointee of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the president-elect's brother. She says she has no plans to join his administration as an ambassador, as had been speculated in The Washington Post.

"Certainly that is a dream for everyone, but right now I have a job to do and I am very focused," says Harris.

Harris says she has no idea who would have won

Asked what her relationship is with President-elect Bush, Harris, who has a photo with the Bush brothers in her Tallahassee office, says, "I admire him incredibly, and I respect the job he has done as governor and I think he is going to be a great president."

But she discounts any suggestion that her actions, such as rejecting hand-counted ballots, were intented to help Bush win. "I believe that George Bush won the election through the vote of the people and the way our republic is set up," she says. "All we did was follow the law in the Department of State."

Had a full recount of the whole state been completed, she says she has no idea who would have won.

"There's just no way I could know, ...I have no idea," says Harris. "Certainly I had my preference, and I very much hoped that George W. Bush would be our next president," but in her capacity as secretary of state, she says, "I just wanted to be a voice of reason."

She tells Sawyer: "I had to follow the law strictly whether it took a victory to George W. Bush or to Vice President Al Gore." Though she was a staunch Bush supporter, she says "No matter what, I had to act with integrity in the system because I have to live with myself for the rest of my life, regardless of who the president is." Harris says she has not heard from the president-elect. "Does that bother you?" asks Sawyer. Harris responds, "I think he has quite a lot to do besides contacting me."

Election Night

Harris says she went to bed on Election Night believing Bush had been elected the country's 43rd president. Just before dawn, she was awakened by a phone call from Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who was calling from Austin. She says he wanted to know what prompted an automatic recount, but she denies the two discussed anything other than the legal process.

"He wanted to know what prompted the automatic recount," she says. "I got dressed immediately and within five minutes I was at the Capitol."

With Harris at ground zero in an explosive political crisis, "We put up basically a fire wall," she says. With Bush ahead just a few hundred votes, some Florida counties launched a hand recount. But Harris seemed inflexible, attempting to block hand recounts and denying even an additional two hours that Palm Beach County requested to complete their recount. Harris says the delay would have been longer than hours, as the county did not finish their recount for two days.

While the Bush team was thrilled, Gore supporters were outraged. And while a lower court supported her interpretation of the law, the highest court in Florida, in a scathing opinion, unanimously ruled against her decisions saying she hadn't followed the spirit of the law.

Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court let Harris' decision stand

"We weren't trying to rush it or slow things down," she says. "There wasn't a strategy behind this."

Harris suggests that Al Gore's request to delay certification of the votes may have deprived him of time to contest the certified results. "It shortened the time on the back side for the contest," she says. "From my perspective, it just seems that if [the Gore campaign] followed the law before the Supreme Court changed the law and extended the deadlines, they would have had more time for contest. It is up for history or for them to determine if that was a shot in the foot."

Asked if she had wanted a statewide manual recount, Harris says, "I always want to make sure that every voter feels that their vote is counted, but you're asking such a speculative question because then there was not a standard."

11JAN2001 Lawsuit charges racism in Florida voting procedures Really??

Catherine Wilson writing for AP says, "Claiming that blacks were disenfranchised in November by institutionalized racism, civil rights groups sued Florida election officials Wednesday in a bid to overhaul how elections are run.

The lawsuit, rounding up complaints from the Nov. 7 presidential election, asks a federal judge to get rid of punch-card ballots used in 25 counties, fix the state's system for purging voter lists and monitor Florida elections for 10 years. There is no effort to overturn the results of the presidential race won by George W. Bush.

Secretary of State Katherine Harris, state elections chief Clay Roberts and county election supervisors are named in the suit.

Controversy Grows over Attorney General Nominee John Ashcroft
Conservative groups are fighting back against attacks on John Ashcroft, while liberal activists hope to find new ammunition against him in a 1999 speech he gave at Bob Jones University.