This is not what I consider to be a "responsible" contribution to the Rumor Mill News:

: Just remember -- what goes around comes around!!

: If the shrub and family bushes stole this election from the
: Democrats, then they will get their karma the same way
: Kennedy got his!

On MSNBC this afternoon, a lawyer who specializes in election law explained that the Florida legislature has previously stipulated that the so-called "Butterfly Ballot" used in Palm Beach County was not lawfully drawn, that all of the presidential candidates were supposed to be listed in a vertical column with the punch holes to one side only, not plastered on both sides of the pages.

The elected officials of Palm Beach responsible for choosing and approving this ballot are Democrats: the ballot was sent around to the various party officers and it was also offered for public comment well before the election. Samples were mailed out to registered voters in advance. If the Democrats have suddenly gotten the religion of "rule of law," then every single Butterfly Ballot used in Palm Beach County must be excluded as being illegally drawn and issued. Why the Secretary of the State and the other election officials did not catch this is beyond me, unless, of course, they wanted this SNAFU to occur.

: This is a zero year. All presidents elected in a zero year
: have died in office.

This is flat out wrong: Thomas Jefferson stood for election in 1800 and he lived through his two terms as President, surviving in good health until a very advanced age. He died on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. So, too, died John Adams of Massachusetts that day -- about twelve hours after Jefferson in Virginia -- whose most famous last words were, "Jefferson lives." How right he was.

: If the Bush family rigged this election, what goes around will come around and get them!

As it is, I am no particular fan of the Bush clan or of their free trade and "anything for China" politics. But this statement is really uncharitable and borders on being flat-out stupid.

Please reconsider what you mean. And when discussing the fact that presidents elected in years ending in zero have all too often died in office, you are speaking of Tecumseh's Curse, a very palpable bit of Shawnee magic. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was re-elected in 1940 and again in 1944, and then he died in office. It is a stretch but it does fit the parameters of "the Curse." Ronald Reagan should have died in that assassination attempt of 1981, but he was either way too tough or possessed of a little dollop of that good old Irish-American counter-magic.

What thinketh you?