Our ideology is our beast. And for our ideology, our designated gladiators are willing to sacrifice their honor, their credibility, and even their sense of reason and fair-play.

James Addison Baker III was the American Secretary of State from 1989 through 1992. Serving as White House chief of staff from 1981 to 1985, Baker was also a member of the National Security Council and a senior foreign policy adviser. In 1991, he organized the first comprehensive Middle East peace conference. This is a man capable of moving the Middle East, perhaps the most contested battleground in world history, closer to sanity. And yet, he's also capable of making statements like, "At some point we must stop the counts of the votes so that the votes can count."

Ah, but the Democrats are also guilty of feeding the beast. On November 8, 2000, between 1:30AM and 1:45AM CST, Al Gore conceded the election to George W. Bush. Then, less than an hour later, between 2:30AM and 2:45AM CST, Gore retracted his concession. Think on this. If your arch-opponent just surrendered, giving you the presidency, and then you had it taken away from you minutes later, wouldn't you react like a cornered junkyard dog? History may judge Gore kindly, saying that he was wise to retract his concession because all the facts hadn't come in. But, then again, the action does not shed positive light on his behavior as a president. "Oops, I just pushed that red button, but I didn't mean it," is not something you ever want to hear a president say.

And so, otherwise sane and credible people are doing stupid things. A well-regarded Florida state politician, one Katherine Harris, is the chairman of George W's Florida campaign,. Can't she see it's really bad PR to be the one making the decision to certify a disputed and tainted vote? Men who should know better are attempting to tell us that counting votes by machine is more American than counting them by hand. Hello? I'm just guessing here, but I'd think the founding fathers didn't really plan on us using punch card sorters and tabulators to determine our leadership.

And then, there's the fight over the "chad," the literal bits that are the holes of the punch cards. Is or is not a "dimpled" or "pregnant" chad a valid vote? There's nothing, not a thing, in our Constitution that says you have to be able to operate a punch card machine properly to earn your right to vote.

On the other hand, (and forgive me, for I am most certainly not a constitutional scholar), the 26th Amendment, which was ratified on July 1, 1971, says the following:

The right of citizens of the United States, who are 18 years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

It would seem to me, therefore, that there are two elements at work here. First, common sense would have it that any indentation, mark, or other indication of intent would count as a vote. So, whether a chad has been completely removed on the one hand, or a mere pinprick mark can be detected on the other, clearly there was intent, and clearly there was a vote.