This is the Justice whose swing vote gave you George W. Bush in the Supreme Court decision appointing him President in 2000. Checking the Supreme Court’s collection of her opinions, reveals that she did not give one on Bush vs Gore in 2000, she silently gave her consent on one of the most controversial historical decisions of the court.
While all the praises come flowing in, I found this humourous piece in the TalkingPointsMemo café.

I met Sandra Day O’Connor at a writers conference last year, and she was a nightmare.  The organizers kept telling all the progressives that we might try putting aside our partisan differences, and listen to her stories, her legal erudition, her elegance.  Well, first of all, how can you put aside her swing vote in the 2000 “election”?  It’s like putting aside the fact that someone has exposed your family to Ebola.  Second, she was cold as fucking ice, to use the theological term.  I walked within three feet of her, and we made eye contact, and I said, nice as pie, like the black belt co-dependent I am, “Hi!” and she walked on without saying a word.

Elegance would have been to say hi back, or even just to smile.  She’s horrible in that same folky white haired false-humility way that Barbara Bush is. Her case worker, or attendant, or whoever he was, looked stricken by her rudeness.

And third, I heard her read from her memoir that night, and it was so terrible that it made my stomach ache.  She read a segment about her childhood, growing up on a ranch, about standing outside under the stars at night, which looked so close you could TOUCH them–I am not making this up–and I said to my tiny princess self, “Bore me later”.  And left, as unobtrustively as I could.

She’s horrible in that same folky white haired false-humility way that Barbara Bush is.
Like Barbara Bush, the person who writes children’s books, the same person who bred two war mongers, the same person who forgot to teach GWB to read.

But back to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, big deal, the first woman Justice. The question is did she put the best interests of the country first? I think she owes the Democrats an explanation of her 2000 swing vote on Bush vs Gore.

The “Ice Queen” is gone, long live Torture King Alberto Gonzales!

Update [2005-7-5 15:10:8 by sybil]:From the Vanity Fair, October 2004 report on “The Path to Florida” we learn that Justice O’Connor actually expressed her dismay at a Gore win at a party, on election night. She was expected to step aside by the liberal clerks of the Court. Later, when Gore’s lawyers heard about this, they thought about asking her to step aside. Later, November 29, 2000, at a party another clerk recalls, “she thought the Florida court was trying to steal the election and that they had to stop it.” She railed against what she considered “the stupidity of the Florida voters.” The report suggests that her mind was made up from the beginning, although the Democrats still had hopes of persuading her and Kennedy. Kennedy was the one they suggest was the real swing voter.

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