hand vice

It was herbal, of course, doubling as the real thing, but in certain hands vice made nice.

After hearing two hours of argument about the nexus between democracy and chads, a federal judge paused barely an instant today before handing Vice President Al Gore an important victory in the first courtroom battle of the postelection.

Ruling on narrow grounds, a divided federal appeals court today rejected Gov. George W. Bush's request that the manual recount of presidential ballots in Florida be barred, handing Vice President Al Gore a badly needed legal victory.