New Yorker: Last week, Al Gore, at the start of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, took note of a curious coincidence. Almost exactly seven years earlier–on December 12, 2000–the United States Supreme Court had called a halt to the Florida recount, thereby un-electing him President. "I read my own political obituary in a judgment that seemed to me harsh and mistaken–if not premature," Gore told the dignitaries assembled in Oslo. "But that unwelcome verdict also brought a precious if painful gift: an …