i feel like Libby Holden, played by Kathy Bates in Primary Colors; disillusioned unto despondancy. Oh! give me a gun and a place of solitude, like she found; give me just one more smoke-scented, iced-air, evening-starred sunset, which we see in the Northern latitudes, nigh on January; give me what is right, or at least your best effort to produce a remedy for what is wrong; give me peace. But do not dare hand me a patronizing lie! Couch it in whatever patriotic pap you want, soak it in whatever deceptive rhetoric and lies you use to make it palatable for yourselves. But don't ask me to swallow. You get it your way this time because we Liberals relaxed. We relaxed too much—way too much—into an opiate-like daze of indifference and dispiritedness which took us out of contention. The only thing necessary for a Bush Junta to succeed, is for enough good people to do nothing.

The Supreme Court of the United States delivered a fatal shot to the head of our last hope for a legitimate President, regardless of who that might have been (and it probably would have been Bush). I am sick of seeing goose-stepping Republicans, seething with contempt and insecurity, emerge from every quarter to obfuscate, incite, and do everything possible to interfere with truth's revealing, everything but throw themselves bodily into its path (they're not that selfless—although the spectre of such a sacrifice, occasionally, would make their antics far less tedious.)

But tonight... tonight, they got me. They did me in. I was not in a real good space anyway. And tonight, it really hurt.

1968 felt like tonight, I was almost ten, in the fourth grade, and the Peace Train was on its way, rolling... rolling, gaining speed, rolling... rolling, hope on board, rolling... rolling, its destination, a quiet, sunny, peaceful place in a just nation, rolling... rol

My sisters, my brother and I were awakened by my aunt with the stunningly unbelievable news—only two months after Martin Luther King had been assassinated—that Bobby Kennedy had been shot. These things had become almost familiar. We all could spell 'assassinate'. And we presumed that Bobby was already dead. But... No! He's not! Snippets of detail; bullet lodged.. cerebellum.. X-Rays.. neurosurgeons. Hope.

I went to school on the morning of June 5, 1968 with butterflies in my stomach borne of a naive hope that the damage would be undone; all would be well; the Peace Train would go on.

I would not be naive for long.

And such was my hope yesterday, after the Florida Supreme Court split in favor of a recount—the three elder justices dissenting from their younger counterparts. Idealistic hope has a much longer shelf-life than naivete, but when youthful idealism goes, a wizened realism takes its place. Today, that realism acknowledges a cynical tragedy.

i'd like to think there was a time when elevation to the judicial bench inspired an ascendancy of the intellect to a higher plane, a level where personal, and certainly political beliefs were not allowed to intrude. I'd like to think those robes were donned in humble awe of the great power conferred, and were worn—and worn-out—with dignity, in service to Truth. And I'd like to think these things in superlatives regarding the United States Supreme Court—and I did, until today.

"...there is a danger that a stay may cause irreparable harm to the respondents—and, more importantly, the public at large—because of the risk that 'the entry of the stay would be tantamount to a decision on the merits in favor of the applicants'[1]"

--U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens
dissenting from the high court's decision to grant the stay and stop the recount.

you'd think, by now, I'd know better than to hope. You'd think I'd have settled into a functional relationship with disappointments, and have learned by now to not despair, or at least, to not cry when five of the nine justices on my nation's highest court make a grossly injudicial—indeed, prejudicial—statement about the outcome of a case they haven't, yet, even heard.

"It suffices to say that the issuance of the stay suggests that a majority of the Court, while not deciding the issues presented, believe that the petitioner has a substantial probability of success."

--U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
in response to Justice Stevens' dissent.

With stunning hubris, and an arrogant disregard for the trust of a nation, Justice Antonin Scalia predicted the outcome of the case, which will not be heard until Monday, saying it will be decided in favor of the petitioner, George W. Bush. That remark has completely repudiated the last remnants of my majestic vision (illusion?) of a just nation; completely, except for the pronouncement in thirty-six hours. Why couldn't he wait—for my sake? He is not an impartial final arbiter. His premature declaration of the inevitable, reveals him as an impatient and imperious Republican fed-up with dissent, and contemptuous of due process. Delay, and win, without regard for the damage done by taking that tack. And when the chief executive and his court are comfortably installed, no count of Florida's 'votes-in-waiting' can or should be trusted.

It's not a joke; it hurts. It's like waiting for Bobby Kennedy to die.

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