with rhetoric vituperous, while scared and posturing courageous, you claimed to know with certainty details unascertainable. I did, too. You distrusted some of us; I distrusted some on your side. You feared becoming powerless, you feared the loss of control over things important in your life; so did I. And so, we fought.

I claim to be a liberal; a bleeding-heart, tax and spend, gun-confiscating, conglomerate-hating, species-saving liberal. I grew-up in left-leaning Massachusetts, and my parents were suffering-Catholic, Kennedy-voting Democrats. I used to listen to NPR—once truly progressive and open-minded, now only a token liberal among media outlets, and not so liberal anymore. Now I read Mother Jones and In These Times. I contribute to the Sierra Club, and the ACLU. I oppose the death penalty, support criminal rehabilitation instead of harsh criminal sentencing, and I am very worried about the engorgement of police powers marked by a formerly unheard-of tolerance for misconduct, and an official disregard for due process allowing police entities to confiscate property alleged to represent profits from drug trafficking.

I found myself, during the recent contentious election, not so liberal. Oh, sure, I still supported the Democratic candidate, Al Gore, Jr., whom I have described as having the charisma of a post. But Al and his history, his experience, his boring dependability, and even the fact that his once or twice removed cousin is Gore Vidal, all began to look legitimately Presidential. Indeed, I began to wax fanatic in my support for him and my opposition to George W. Bush, and I began to see in my opponents who were "seething with contempt and insecurity, [who] emerge[d] from every quarter to obfuscate, incite, and do everything possible to interfere with truth's revealing," a mirror of myself. I was becoming no different than a rabidly terrified, big money worshiping, truth-twisting, tax-cutting, ethics-eschewing, cold-hearted, self-serving conservative.

george W. Bush was not elected President. Yet he is. So? What else is new? Any serious student of the Law without a pre-existing bias will be hard-pressed to find any federal issue that justifies the U.S. Supreme Court intervening in what is—despite its Presidential implications—an issue of Florida election statutes. A student of the Law who is also a budding conservative will of course find anything he wants, much like Chief Justice Rehnquist did in his expansively concurring and, some might argue, nonjudicial opinion, the inconsistencies of which Justices Ginsburg and Breyer sharply and specifically criticized. And he's the Chief Justice.

The Court was wrong to take this case. It was wrong to grant a stay. It should now vacate that stay and permit the Florida Supreme Court to decide whether the recount should resume.

--U.S. Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer
Bush v. Gore, December 12, 2000, dissenting.

The U.S Supreme Court's decision is facile, frangible, and relies on circular logic of its own fabrication to justify its partisan political decision. The stay, issued Saturday December 9, 2000, halted the progressing recount and did not allow for oral arguments until Monday December 11, 2000. In a month when Florida judges kept their courts in session until 1:00 AM and resumed at 7:00 AM to address the pressing constraints of time, the Supreme Court's lethargy at an even more crucial moment is unhelpful, at best, and suspicious of motive. Then in its decision, the Republican majority remands the case to the Florida Supreme Court with an artifical deadline of December 12, imposing a laundry list of unjustifiable requirements, each of which must be allowed several days for legal contest, effectively transforming their 'remand order' into a thinly veiled and disingenuous command to disregard any additional, legal votes or possible Democratic Presidential victory.

In the interest of finality, however, the majority effectively orders the disenfranchisement of an unknown number of voters whose ballots reveal their intent— and are therefore legal votes under state law— but were for some reason rejected by ballot-counting machines. It does so on the basis of the deadlines set forth in Title 3 of the United States Code. But, as I have already noted, those provisions merely provide rules of decision for Congress to follow when selecting among conflicting slates of electors. They do not prohibit a State from counting what the majority concedes to be legal votes until a bona fide winner is determined. Indeed, in 1960, Hawaii appointed two slates of electors and Congress chose to count the one appointed on January 4, 1961, well after the Title 3 deadlines.

--U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens
Bush v. Gore, December 12, 2000, dissenting.

The Court should not have reviewed either Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Bd., or this case, and should not have stopped Florida’s attempt to recount all undervote ballots, by issuing a stay of the Florida Supreme Court’s orders during the period of this review. If this Court had allowed the State to follow the course indicated by the opinions of its own Supreme Court, it is entirely possible that there would ultimately have been no issue requiring our review, and political tension could have worked itself out in the Congress following the procedure provided in 3 U. S. C. §15. The case being before us, however, its resolution by the majority is another erroneous decision.

--U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter
Bush v. Gore, December 12, 2000, dissenting.

In sum, the Court’s conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recount is impractical is a prophecy the Court’s own judgment will not allow to be tested. Such an untested prophecy should not decide the Presidency of the United States.

I dissent.

--U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Bush v. Gore, December 12, 2000, dissenting.

a liberal has a warm, not bleeding heart, capable of loving and generous in doing so, and a mind not closed, rigid and narrow, but open in an ever evolving bloom, absorbing the truth around it, and contributing to that truth without force or ownership, but rather like a fragrant flower contributes to Spring's gentle breeze. A liberal is a fragile thing, and that fragility is not a weakness but a strength; in fact it is a liberal's only strength for, if he pretends to be invulnerable, he becomes a weak imposter. We are two, the conservative and I, we are the Yin and Yang, the dirt and the flower, the delicate expression of beauty, and the indispensible alternative.

I could be the earth, rich with decay and potential for beauty unexpressed. That's what I almost became in this election agony, when I lost sight of the difference between the conservative and I. And that might have been just fine, except for one thing; deep, deep down, I prefer to be a liberal. As much as I would like, I can't have it both ways, the mineral indestructibility of conservatism combined with the lush foliar sensitivity of liberalism. I have to be one or the other, and so with refreshed perception, I embrace my half of this duality, the person who I am—a liberal.

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