Yes, I'm still beating the old drum. I have long followed this story with baited breath and finally the results have come out the way I thought they would. But who in their right minds can argue the point any longer. There is no such thing as the second bite at an apple that has gone bad. Although I said last month that out of respect I would no longer malign or disparage our sitting president, I can however report a published finding out of pure speculation.

A year has passed since one of the closest, most divisive presidential elections in American history gave democracy and fair play a mugging in Florida. That election, by any objective measure, gave us an illegitimately elected president. For those who think that this matter should not be discussed now that there's a war on and this president, in all due respect, is performing at a very high rate of efficiency, I say they are absolutely and totally wrong. Faced with revenging the horror of a terrorist attack on our nation, wouldn't any other president have done the same? That's what we hire them for!

Al Gore defeated George W. Bush in the popular vote nationally by nearly 540,000 votes. And, after eight national news organizations spent nearly $1 million on a 10-month review of more than 175,000 uncounted disputed ballots by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center (NORC), Bush probably lost in Florida also.

The corporate press predictably buried this result and/or structured their stories to lead with the scenarios where Bush would have won the electoral votes in Florida that gave him the presidency. While the NORC ballot review found that Bush would've likely won if the recount of votes sought by Gore in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Broward and Volusia counties hadn't been stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court, the NORC review found that Gore would've probably prevailed by a narrow margin if a statewide recount had been done.

The U.S. Supreme Court looked for standards that would apply to a Florida recount. The Bush forces legally delayed them and so they did nothing. Those standards they did not seek out were the ones that NORC used in its ballot review. Had the state been given time to do a complete full-and-fair recount, Gore would have likely won and the popular will of American voters would've been upheld.

But that wasn't ever going to happen. The Bush team went to extraordinary lengths to prevent a complete count of Florida's ballots; a recount that Gore was entitled to under Florida law.

Why? Because it was clear that Bush would lose Florida and the presidency if they did. That's why we saw their stonewalling, intimidation, legal maneuvering and media spin. The GOP portrayed Gore as a sore loser who endangering the nation with his insistence on legal challenges to what the Republicans believe was a fair-and-square victory for their man. But fairness is a sign of weakness to people who want a nation where the wealthy are free to grow richer and corporations are free to grow more powerful. Harry Truman hit the mark long ago when he said that GOP stood for "Guardians of Privilege."

Our democracy failed us in our last election. Instead of our power being in the consent of the governed, we got a muddled result that was the logical outcome of an electoral process corrupted by big money, distorted by big media and strong-armed by political hustlers.

Of course, pointing that out right now means that we are unpatriotic, a hopeless conspiracy theorist or just a "sore loser man" (the GOP's clever corruption of the Gore-Lieberman campaign signs that were all over Florida during the post-election recount circus).

War or no war, George W. Bush remains a dubiously elected president who wrested control of the office through, lets us not say "partisan thuggery", but perhaps let us say through "tough partisan persuasion". He remains the figurehead of a political movement that has made it clear that it will settle for nothing less than the complete rollback of democracy for the many in favor of an oligarchy for the few.

Should we ignore the facts and for the sake of national unity accept that the Bush presidency remains a government that lacks legitimacy? There is a sad truth here. For the first time, we are able to take a good look at a fouled up electoral process. A flawed procedure, it can be easily manipulated if you know how and you have the muscle to do it. Before our next presidential election rolls around, it must be repaired.

But the day will come when President Bush's current 90 percent approval rating will melt away like a spring snow, as was the case with his father a decade ago after the Persian Gulf War. We can only hope that by the time he comes up for re-election, the voters will see his shortcomings and recall the chicanery and judicial slight of hand that got him into office in the first place.