Ture enough, Ebbie. Still, it was a blunder. Makes the Gore team look almost as opportunistic as the Bush folks have claimed. My sense is that this decision was not made at the highest levels, otherwise it would have been more carefully thought through.

Another interesting tidbit reported on NPR last night is that the Bush operatives were working on the Florida election boards BEFORE election day to try to make them more receptive to counting un-postmarked ballots -- because they knew the race would be tight in Florida, and thought the military votes might make a difference. [Can't confirm this, but it seemed reputable.] One of the county elections supervisors interviewed on NPR said that this issue has never really mattered before, because absentee ballots have never made the difference in a Presidential election before. As an ex-military guy who used to vote absentee this was a little sobering to me, but it's undoubtedly true. The official went on to say that in the past ALL un-postmarked ballots were routinely excluded -- the fact that they're even being considered this time around is unique. So even though the Bush team is acting aggrieved over this, in fact things are going more their way than they really had a right to expect.