{"article":{"id":4866,"heading":"COUP WATCH: Mythical Deadline Used To Elect Bush Not Enforced in 1960","author":"Paul Rosenberg \/ David Greenberg","created":"2000-12-14 14:18:28","modified":"2013-11-10 23:36:44","last_modified":"Mon, 11 Nov 2013 06:36:44","article":"

In the election of 1960 Hawaii Republicans tried to use the December 12 “safe harbor” provision to stop a recount that eventually gave the state to Kennedy. They failed. It didn't come anywhere *near* the Supreme Court.

The Hawaii election was certified for Nixon in mid-November, but the Democrats immediately demanded a recount. A partial recount dramatically shrunk Nixon’s slight lead, and a complete recount eventually gave the election to Kennedy--but not until after the Electoral College voted on December 19, well after the “safe harbor” deadline which the Supreme Court used in its cover story as it shut down democracy in Florida.

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For the complete story by historian David Greenbergin Salon, click on the link below.<\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/politics\/feature\/2000\/12\/13\/hawaii\/index.html","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":"In the election of 1960 Hawaii Republicans tried to use the December 12 \u201csafe harbor\u201d provision to stop a recount that eventually gave the state to Kennedy. They failed. It didn't come anywhere *near* the Supreme Court.","numcomment":1,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2000\/12\/4866.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":4885,"heading":"Crimson Fall","article":"\r\nCrimson Fall\r\n\r\nby Grover B. Proctor, Jr.\r\n(November 1997)\r\n\r\nThe tears of autumn flow life-red,\r\nPainting creation and my soul\r\nWith an indelible tragic brush.\r\n\r\n In the forest of autumn\r\n Rhus typhina (staghorn sumac).\r\n With arrogant serpentine indifference\r\n This ubiquitous, anonymous plebeian interloper\r\n Insinuates itself among the wooden monuments.\r\n Its leafy talons have turned bright crimson\r\n And curl downward in a haughty silent-screen pose.\r\n\r\nI stand alone beside the car in which\r\nThey killed John Kennedy.\r\n\r\nAn undulant morphing crowd of\r\nGawking pedestrian tourists presses around--\r\nUnsure how to react, reminded of their own mortality,\r\nRepeating hushed words like talismans or omens\r\n(\"Oswald, Jackie, Grassy Knoll, Oliver Stone\"),\r\nAs if possession of them proves they know\r\nThe esoteric secrets of the event and somehow\r\nGives them status above the uninitiated.\r\n\r\nThey bend to read the sign beside the roped-off icon,\r\nWhich simply calls it the \"Kennedy Car\"--\r\nEasily and purposefully evoking memories\r\nOf \"when it was a blue convertible\r\nIn the bright Dallas sun.\"\r\n\r\nThe museum doesn't sell the picture postcard\r\nOf this infamous \"X-100\" 1961 Lincoln any more;\r\nThe gift shop managers don't know why not,\r\nAnd so can merely shrug each time they're asked.\r\nDisappointed, the crowd moves on.\r\n\r\n In the fields of autumn\r\n Euonymus alatus (burning bush).\r\n Sedate, rounded in priestly wisdom,\r\n Placidly winged yet immovable,\r\n The glorious miraculous annual conflagration begins.\r\n The green mantle immaculately ignites from its edges \r\n inward,\r\n And the Creator weeps in the eternal carmine flame.\r\n\r\nBitter steel and sullen glass (in truth,\r\nTitanium armoring and bullet-proof windows)\r\nNow entomb the open seat from which the president\r\nGave his final wave, flashed the ultimate smile,\r\nAnd unknowingly witnessed his last hurrahs.\r\n\r\nIt doesn't take much imagination to still see,\r\nIn vivid unimpeachable mental celluloid,\r\nThe awful moment when the light was blown out,\r\nAnd national innocence died in that car.\r\nWith it, some say, went hope, inspiration, and vigor.\r\n\r\nLeaders who see futures, set courses, provoke change,\r\nAnd defy both nonchalance and evil\r\nAre often both tragically flawed and intensely hated.\r\nThe good and vital in them cannot be heard\r\nOnce they are silenced, dead, and in the grave--\r\nInto that void comes loss, resentment, and fear;\r\nAnd without their strength and guidance to counterbalance,\r\nOnly choruses of their weaknesses can or will be heard.\r\n\r\nThe flame changed forever from willing to wary,\r\nFrom blazingly synergistic to brutally cynical,\r\nWhen the torch was passed on that day.\r\nThe true legacy of Dealey Plaza is not only who died,\r\nBut that a people's vision and values were lost.\r\n\r\n In the garden of autumn\r\n Salvia splendens (red salvia).\r\n Like scarlet sage spikes, these perennial sanguine \r\n stalks\r\n Appear to drip copiously the blood of fallen heroes,\r\n Or serve as reminders of the spear points\r\n On which some doomed tragic protagonist\r\n Throws himself to exit from an unwanted fate.\r\n\r\nHatred gave birth on that day in 1963.\r\n\r\nAt the cross-streets of unfettered bilious gall\r\nAnd cold anonymous expediency,\r\nIn a goading, cancerous hemorrhaging Cesarean section,\r\nShe whelped the twins Avarice and Anarchy,\r\nWith their birthright to become players in national politics.\r\n\r\nGunfire ripped the flesh of rational debate,\r\nAnd paralyzed the ballot box's muscular arms.\r\nThree shots (was it four? five? or more?)\r\nForced due and constitutional process to abdicate,\r\nAnd the battle of cowardly might over complacent right\r\nProved no contest in an electoral collegiate landslide gunbattle.\r\n\r\nAvarice and Anarchy continue to draw names in the sand,\r\nAnd force the Good and the Decent and the Honest\r\nAway from daring to believe they could run for office.\r\nDare to oppose the Twins' vested interests, it is feared,\r\nAnd some new symbol of high ideals gunned down\r\nCould be the next exhibit in a museum for the masses.\r\n\r\n In the front lawn of autumn\r\n Acer rubrum (red maple).\r\n Exhausted, enervated, exsanguinated of spirit,\r\n I fall down under this old friend's protective gaze.\r\n The sun shines through its fall color, and the whole \r\n world\r\n Takes on a subtle, faint red glow. I sigh, and in \r\n response,\r\n It drops a single leaf that I watch trickle liquidly to \r\n the ground.\r\n\r\nAnd so I stand beside the car in which\r\nThey killed John Kennedy.\r\n\r\nI try to view it as an historical puzzle or anomaly;\r\nAn unsolved conspiracy or a lone nut's dementia--\r\nA presidential limousine retooled with the latest technology\r\nTo more efficiently protect those who came after.\r\n\r\nI try to view it as a symbol of a lost national innocence,\r\nAnd wonder how things might be different--\r\nHow we might be safe had it not happened.\r\n\r\nI try to fill myself with the righteous indignation\r\nOf a citizen who understands what was lost,\r\nAnd what was put in its place on that day.\r\n\r\nBut what I see, as I stand not two feet from the car--\r\nClose enough to touch it were it not against the rules\r\nAnd if I dared to profane a reverent irrevocable moment--\r\nWhat I see is John Kennedy sitting on the back seat,\r\nHis arm resting on the ledge right in front of me,\r\nHis careworn political personal smile dazzling my eyes.\r\n\r\nAnd while I try my damnedest to think of trajectories\r\nAnd bullets and witnesses and cabals and assassins;\r\nWhile I think back on the decades they have consumed me\r\nAnd what I have given back in return;\r\nWhile I attempt to find some way to make sense of it all\r\nIn the terms and paradigms I have used so often--\r\n\r\nHere now, for the first time perhaps ever,\r\nLike a red warmth spreading out from a beleaguered conscience,\r\nThe realization climbs past my heart to the pools of my tears that,\r\nPerhaps far more importantly than all the other\r\nConcepts and ideas and events and outcomes,\r\nIn a shattered grieving eternal moment,\r\nA man--a living breathing sentient human being,\r\nWithout deserving to do so,\r\nWithout being able to defend or prevent--\r\nA man died in this car.\r\n\r\n+++++++\r\nAuthor's Note: The car in which President Kennedy was assassinated is on permanent display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. This poem reflects my reactions to seeing the car for the first time ever in the fall of 1997, after having spent over 20 years as an historian, researcher, consultant, author, and lecturer on the controversies surrounding the assassination.\r\n \r\nhttp:\/\/www.cris.com\/~gproctor\/jfk.shtml","author":"####################","parent_id":4866,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2000-12-15 17:19:07","modified":"2000-12-15 17:41:57","fileurl":""}]}