Does anyone seriously believe that if it had been Al Gore who had been leading by a few hundred votes while ballots were still being counted, he would have been certified by his opponent's ally, the Florida Secretary of State, before all the county recounts already in progress had been reported in? That if a Democratic mob led by representatives of Jesse Jackson, Barney Frank, and Dick Gephardt had stormed the Miami-Dade canvassing board, with a Democratic Congressman shouting "shut it down," that said Secretary of State would have found the election complete and certified the results?

Does anyone seriously believe that if the Florida Supreme Court had ordered a recount requested by Bush, not Gore, the Supreme Court of the United States would have issued an urgent request for clarification of the statutory basis of the Florida Supreme Court's decision? That, having ordered a recount, the Florida Supreme Court would have been commanded to stop by Justices Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, O'Connor, and Kennedy, all of whom had been appointed by Al Gore, Sr., say, and two of whom are eager to retire once they are assured they will be replaced by ideological soulmates? That the Supreme Court majority was motivated to stop the vote count by concern about the equal protection of the right to vote in Florida by African-Americans or Haitian-Americans, or the people whose vote-count was stopped with the help of the Miami mob?

Does anyone seriously believe that the butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County, the roadblock in Tallahassee, and myriad other hapless or deliberate impediments to the equal right to vote, would have stirred the Supreme Court of the United States to stop a state or local vote-count?

Does anyone think that if it had been country club Republican districts that used punch-card ballots and lacked laptop computers to enable poll-watchers to check whether their voters were properly registered, while it was majority-black districts that had optical scanners as well as laptops, the Secretary of State of Florida, the Governor of Florida, the Florida Legislature, or the Supreme Court of the United States would have condemned this flagrant violation of equal protection?

Who has done everything to win? Who thinks winning is not everything, it's the only thing? The Republicans felt cheated in 1960; cheated again in 1973-74, with Watergate; cheated again by Bill Clinton, who dared to win in 1992; cheated yet again when, having impeached him, they failed to convict him. Their court did what it was appointed to do -- defend the rights of state authorities except, when push came to shove, when defending those rights might have benefited their opponent. Push has come to shove. Claiming Gore would do anything to be president, the Republicans have stopped at nothing to get themselves a president. This is a moment of truth. Let scales fall from our eyes.

Akhil Amar is a professor at Yale Law School.

I'm not persuaded, yet, by the majority opinion. There are so many equality problems in our election systems. Most especially in the ways in which [the government] imposes disproportionate burdens on people in poor districts, on largely black precincts. You hardly see any governmental efforts to correct those inequalities. And those equality violations, like bad vote-counting machines in poor districts, seem upside down to me.

David Horowitz is the president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture in Los Angeles and the author of "Radical Son," an account of his odyssey from '60s radical to cultural conservative.

Seven United States Supreme Court justices have concluded what everyone with two eyes and an ounce of integrity already knew -- that the Florida recount was being unfairly conducted and that it violated the right of all citizens to have their votes count equally. If Al Gore really wanted "every vote to count" and really believed that he had won the election, he would have asked for a recount of all Florida votes under a single standard so that the intent of each voter could be judged equally. And he would have done that on Nov. 8.

But Al Gore did not want a fair recount of the Florida votes. He wanted to win by any means necessary. So on the morning of that day he sent dozens of operatives into four select Florida counties that Democrats controlled. He concocted spurious pretexts to challenge the counts: "Butterfly ballots are illegal." (Well, actually, not.) Gore knew that in the counties he selected, the recounted votes would be overwhelmingly Democrat, the judges and election officials would be Democrats and the results would be heavily weighted in his favor. And just to make sure, he sent his operatives into Republican counties to attempt to disqualify overseas military ballots, which were bound to favor George Bush.

In his unseemly lust for power, Al Gore has damaged the credibility of the electoral process, the legitimacy of the presidency, the authority of the courts and, with the help of Jesse Jackson (who will go anywhere, anytime, to smear anyone, so long as it will benefit himself), has done immense damage to race relations as well.

They say Al Gore is a man of faith. If he looks honestly at what he has done, he may understand why he is being punished now.

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