Legal Implications of Bush v. Gore, 10 Years Later from The Takeaway: Early Edition by feedback@thetakeaway.org (Public Radio International and WNYC Radio)

It was ten years ago this week that the Supreme Court handed down their decision in Bush v. Gore. That decision effectively stopped the Florida recount in its tracks and placed George W. Bush in the Oval Office. Jeffrey Toobin, staff writer for the New Yorker and author of The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, joins us to analyze the legal and political ramifications of that controversial Supreme Court moment.

Download the podcast here. The conservative magazine, the National Review attempts to pick apart Toobin's theses:

Toobin says that the Florida courts “order[ed] a statewide recount of all undervotes and overvotes.” The Florida courts did no such thing, and the point is significant for the reasons given in Bush v. Gore and in Chief Justice Wells’ dissenting opinion in the Florida Supreme Court. (Toobin doesn’t mention that three of the seven Florida justices, all Democrats, dissented from the decision that the U.S. Supreme Court reversed.)

Nelson Lund is the author of that article, and makes several other points, worth considering, about Toobin's arguments. Check those out, here. See also: Bush V. Gore: Exposing the Hidden Crisis in American Democracy: Abridged and Updated (Landmark Law Cases and American Society), Bush V. Gore: The Court Cases and the Commentary, Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore (Oxford History of the United States), Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election

Freedom Frenzy: A Look at Presidential Reading Lists from National Review Online

If you look at President Obama’s reading list over the years, it has a clear ideological tilt. He has read a host of books by such liberal authors as Thomas Friedman, but precious few books by conservative ones. Bush, on the other hand, often mixed liberal authors, including Kurlansky and even Camus, in with his Natan Sharansky (The Case for Democracy) and Eliot Cohen (Supreme Command). In this, Obama the reader is very much like Obama the politician. According to a story Rep. Eric Cantor (R., Va.) tells in the new book, Young Guns, Obama dismissed conservative ideas by telling Cantor that the election was over and “I won.” Perhaps Obama should reconsider this approach, if not in politics then at least when it comes to his library. Reading conservative authors is a low-cost way to demonstrate outreach to the other side of the aisle in our far-too polarized society. And who knows? It might even serve reading’s original purpose -- he might learn something.

In the vein of combing through really great reviews and articles that are rich in cross references out to other great reads, this quick article hooks with all of the hoopla over Freedom. It's not about that, obviously. There are probably 6 good titles in that article, definitely worth reading.