Humor: Why Stop At The Supreme Court?

GENEVA, Switzerland -- It was another explosive reversal of fortune in the deadlocked U.S. presidential race. Just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court cancelled the previous day's action by the Florida Supreme Court and halted manual recounts in the Sunshine State, the U.S. court's action was checkmated by a temporary injunction issued by the World Trade Organization.

In a unanimous ruling issued Sunday, the international trade body ordered Florida officials to resume the hand counts. WTO officials said they had been persuaded to intervene by Al Gore's argument that the U.S. Supreme Court, by preventing hand counts, was manipulating trade policy in violation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT. The vice president's laywers had contended that conservatives on the high U.S. court were favoring George W. Bush because of his proposal to separate trade pacts from labor and environmental agreements.

The WTO brushed aside contentions by Bush lawyers that the presidential election was an "internal matter" of the United States outside the WTO's jurisdiction.

WTO Director-General Mike Moore pointed to media coverage quoting U.S. residents as saying that they now consider Florida to be a "banana republic."

"The dispute between the supreme court of Florida and that of the United States needs a voice of reason to be raised. We're it," Moore said.

Reversal-Reversal Draws Reaction

The immediate reaction was unclear.

In Florida's Brevard County, the local canvassing board ordered volunteers to resume counting, then realized that it had not yet informed them that Saturday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling meant they had to stop.

In Okeechobee, Fla., Mayor James Kirk issued an emergency declaration that ballot counters were immune from prosecution for illegal U-turns.

Major news networks accidentally played a videotape of Bush adviser James A. Baker's press conference expressing disappointment with the court ruling from two reversals earlier. In a press release, the Bush campaign stated that Baker's official stance will be "stern" for the duration of the legal battle.

Once it was clear that the hand counts were resuming, Bush attorneys countered the WTO order by obtaining an encyclical from the Vatican declaring hand counts to be a sin. Gore attorneys said they will honor Pope John Paul II's order in most of the universe, but they secured a policy directive from NASA affirming that the hand counts will remain in force in this solar system.

The papal-spatial dispute will be resolved in an emergency meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America in Huntsville, Ala., Monday over lunch.

Lead Gore attorney David Boies denied speculation that his team was preparing a contingency petition to the Council of All-Knowing Watchers based in the 8th Dimension, but he said that no options had been ruled out.

"We want every vote counted, in this dimension as well as in all the infinite realities that may exist parallel to our own world," Boies told reporters in Tallahassee.

In other election news, Alan Keyes still thinks he has a decent shot at the White House this year.