12/01/00 11:15 a.m.
A Beautiful Day for a Protest
The scene outside the court.

By John J. Miller, NR’s national political reporter

hen I saw Al Sharpton cross First Street this morning — awayfrom the U.S. Supreme Court building and toward the Capitol — I wanted to say to him: "Sir, the circus is in the other direction!" But he was walking too quickly, and a scampering reporter had a microphone jammed in his face. Sharpton was muttering something about counting every vote.

It's a beautiful day for a protest in Washington, D.C. — a bright blue sky, with only a few clouds in the distance. In front of the Supreme Court, a couple thousand people are crammed onto a sidewalk, corralled there by Capitol Hill police officers who won't let anybody walk up the glistening white steps. Al Gore's supporters have gathered on the right side of the block, and George W. Bush's have assembled on the left. Their numbers are pretty evenly split. The cops have created a sort of DMZ between the two groups, but partisans walk back and forth freely, shouting at each other. Somebody should be selling throat lozenges.

Just about everyone carries a placard. There is a fellow dressed up in Darth Vader duds. His sign says, on one side, "Four more years for the Evil Empire," and, on the other, "Count every vote until the dark side wins." Another Bushie holds up a homemade poster in which the "G" in Gore is a hammer-and-sickle. One Democrat hoists a board reading, "Voter Harris-ment." The National Council of Senior Citizens is out in force for Gore — about 120 of them, according to spokesman Joe Ervin. But a bunch of the sign-holders didn't look too old. "We've got some staff here, too," explained Ervin, who carried a red bullhorn. "And some people have requested our signs."

There are a bunch of causes trying to piggyback on all the publicity. One man has a large stand set up, carrying this message: "God commands Barak destroy Palestine's rebellion!" There are gross-out pictures of aborted babies: "10 million uncounted votes," says the sign. The Chinese Falun Gong movement has an elaborate display. Nobody was paying much attention to it, so I talked to Mindy Ge for a moment, and told her NR has written about her group's persecution in China. She smiled at that, and told me, "I voted for Bush."

The oral arguments inside the building got underway at 10:00 AM, but none of the protesters could tell. They were too caught up in oral arguments of their own.