What never gets old is a high-minded party taking the high road in a fight with a psychopathic enemy.   While the high-minded party cites respect for precedents, norms and common decency, the low-minded party, unhampered by any thought of fairness in a fight to the death, smiles as it straps on a switchblade-toed iron boot for below the belt kicking.

The meaning of Make of America Great Again, year 2000 model, while the final ruling in Bush v. Gore was pending:

The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said today that she was working at a conservative research group gathering resumes for appointments in a possible Bush administration but that she saw no conflict between her job and her husband’s deliberations on a case that could decide the presidency.

The comments from the justice’s wife, Virginia Lamp Thomas, a former Republican Congressional aide, came as a federal judge in Nashville said Justice Thomas faced a serious conflict of interest as a result of his wife’s work for the Heritage Foundation.

The foundation has close ties to the Republican Party and would probably have a say in the hiring of key government officials if Gov. George W. Bush assumed the presidency. In e-mail distributed on Capitol Hill earlier this month, Mrs. Thomas solicited resumes ”for transition purposes” from the government oversight committees of Congress.

A decision by Justice Thomas to recuse himself could alter the outcome of the case now before the court, which is weighing whether to allow a manual recount of votes in Florida. On Saturday, by a vote of 5 to 4, the court blocked the recount for now. Justice Thomas, who was appointed to the court by President George Bush, Governor Bush’s father, was in the majority. If Justice Thomas were to recuse himself, it could result in a 4-to-4 tie in the case now before it, which would allow the ruling by the Florida Supreme Court to stand.

”There is no conflict here,” Mrs. Thomas said in an interview. She insisted that she rarely discussed matters before the Supreme Court with her husband and that Justice Thomas therefore should not consider recusing himself from the landmark case.

A spokesman for Vice President Al Gore said he had no comment on accusations of a conflict of interest. ”The Vice President has the highest regard for the independent judiciary, so we’re not going to comment on the various questions that have been raised,” said Mark Fabiani, a Gore campaign spokesman.

Ah! The fucking high road, boys and girls! Over and over.