2000 all over again?

It wasn't possible in 2008, but it appears that the Republicans are trying to steal Florida again.

 It's mainly being reported at the Huffington Post: hundreds of people waiting on line for early voting, spending hours before they can get in, and in one case even having their cars towed away.

 The chaos is the direct result of new laws enacted by the Republican legislature to curtail early voting, and when the crowds that appeared were too large to be accommodated, did Medicare defrauder Rick Scott extend the hours? Just the opposite:

Miami-Dade attempted to deal with the problem on Sunday by allowing voters to cast absentee ballots in person between 1:00 and 5:00 p.m. However, after just two hours, the Miami-Dade elections department shut down the location after too many people showed up. People outside the locked doors were reportedly screaming, "We want to vote!"

 There is no mistake here. What is happening is, once again, a deliberate effort to suppress the Democratic vote and give Florida's electoral votes to Romney.

 Which makes Frank Bruni's column in Sunday's Times particularly ironic. Bruni calls for amity following the election, a hope that bipartisanship will reign.

  There’s an opportunity here, as we hit the reset button, for Obama to begin a second term by lavishing his attention on areas of general bipartisan agreement or for Romney to begin a first term with a focus on that same territory.

Then, predictably, Bruni descends into the MSM's favorite rhetorical construct: the false equivalence.

The Obama and Romney campaigns have already signaled that they’ll be sending lawyers, thousands of them, to polling places on Tuesday to gather information for possible legal challenges to the results, should the campaigns feel that there’s some justification for challenges and — perhaps just as important — some way to sway the outcome. They’re poised, in other words, to reject the integrity of the tally.

 What's happening in Florida is proof that we need to send lawyers to challenged states, and to bring in international monitors, not to file challenges after the election is over, but to bring lawsuits while the election is going on, and before the Republicans have the chance to steal it.

 I surely hope for a legitimate Presidency, but the Republicans are doing everything they can to prevent it.