Joe Lieberman and the Florida recount

From Recount, here's the unfolding of Joe Lieberman's capitulation to Bush lawyers on counting unpostmarked, undated, unsigned overseas ballots received after election day:

Overall, overseas ballots received after election day boosted Bush's total by 739 votes. (Gore actually lead Bush by 202 votes in the ballots cast and received on or before election day.) Of the 2,411 late ballots, 680 were later determined to have been illegally counted by The New York Times.

An analysis by Princeton and Harvard researchers found that if these 680 illegal ballots hadn't been counted, Bush's final margin would have been closer to 251 votes. That probably wouldn't have been a big enough difference to swing the election even if SCOTUS hadn't stopped the recount and nothing else had changed, but it does make it all the more clear that Al Gore actually received more votes than George Bush on election day -- even when you ignore GOP voter supression tactics or the butterfly ballot.

And in the context of the recount, it pretty much killed Gore's chances of winning. As Kevin Spacey says sarcastically at the end of the scene: "Thank you Joe Lieberman."

(As an aside, Barack Obama once called Lieberman his "mentor." It's proof that he's not perfect, and hopefully he learned from that mistake!)