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Monday, May 02, 2005

Front Page Zeal; Consolidator Out

- Yesterday’s New York Times had one of the most unsettling photos I’ve seen recently. It was a picture of John Bolton, participating in the Florida recount in 2000. It apparently was taken sometime after December 9, 2000, when Bolton, having flown back from South Korea for the occasion, burst into a library where disputed ballots were being counted and announced, "I’m with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count." There's democracy in action for you.

Fearing that each minute of additional counting would reveal the reality of voter sentiments in Florida, Bolton personally rushed into the library to stop the count.
…….
It was there that he personally shut down the review of ballots from Miami-Dade County, a populous and particularly contested county where independent reviews would later reveal that hundreds of ballots that could reasonably have been counted for Gore were instead discarded. [The Nation]
One can only hope that Gore had people with the same partisan zeal on his side; unfortunately, Bolton ultimately had the Supreme Court on his.

Anyway, today’s Times has, also on the front page, a story by Joe Drape on how the racing industry is finally fighting its medication problem with similar passion. Trainer John T. Ward comments, "We've been in denial the last 20 years." When Belmont Park opens Wednesday, all entrants will be required to spend six hours in a detention barn, an unprecedented step. And at the Derby, beginning Thursday,
Louisville police officers and Jefferson County sheriff's deputies will take up posts on Churchill Downs' backside along with extra private-security guards hired by the track. And an independent team of investigators from the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau and the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority will also be watching the barns of Derby horses. [NY Times]


- Consolidator is out of the Derby, with a a fractured sesamoid in his right front ankle. I guess this means that B. Wayne Hughes will get to run both Don't Get Mad and Greeley's Galaxy.

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