A rare speech by Karl Rove, to the Federalist Society on the topic of the courts. Rove notes a familiar refrain in recounting the battle over the Alabama state courts:
It began in 1994, when Republican Perry Hooper challenged sitting chief justice and trial lawyer-favorite Sonny Hornsby. Hooper pulled off a stunning upset. Outspent, outworked, he won by 262 votes out of over 1.2 million votes cast. And then, the day after the election, several thousand absentee ballots mysteriously surfaced, none of them witnessed nor notarized, as required by Alabama law, and Sonny Hornsby tried to have them counted. It took a year of court battles before Hooper was finally seated.