Helping out on 'Manifestly Unfit'

I'm in the process of writing Part 1 of "Manifestly Unfit: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush," which as I promised when starting out, is very much a reader-participation project.

[Big thanks, by the way, to JP the Great for getting me the URLs to the Saturday Night Live skits.]

As indicated at the end of the Intro, Part 1 is going to key off on George W. Bush's inauguration, since that seems like a logical place to start a review of his presidency. (I'm going to delve Bush's past in more detail in a couple of subsequent chapters, including the 2000 campaign, but the bulk of the essay is going to focus on his tenure as president.)

The next post is going to focus on the way Bush's high-handedness asserted itself from the outset -- his absolute refusal to even acknowledge the, er, unusual circumstances of his ascension to the Oval Office, and the distinct lack of any olive branch to the opposition. Simultaneously (and very much part of this), it will observe the initial appearances of what were to evolve into "First Amendment Zones," mainly through the strange herding of the thousands of protesters in Washington on the day of the event. I also plan to discuss the Bush v. Gore ruling that hung over the day.

So I've got a couple of requests of any readers who might want to contribute:

-- I'd like to hear from anyone who was in Washington to protest and can describe the handling of protesters there, especially if they were mistreated, abused, intimidated or silenced. (I'd also like amusing anecdotes about contact with Republicans.) I already have substantial information in this regard, but frankly (especially considering the atrocious way the story was handled in the press), there can never be too much information about this.

-- I'm planning to focus much of my discussion of Bush v. Gore on Vincent Bugliosi's The Betrayal of America, which was an expansion of his terrific essay in The Nation, "None Dare Call it Treason." I'm also familiar with Richard Posner's defense of the ruling and will briefly discuss it as well. I think Bugliosi's book is generally sound, and I also plan to refer to some good FindLaw articles as well; but if anyone else can point me to any further examinations of the ruling that raise additional points, I'd very much appreciate it. I'd also like to know if anyone has actually managed a better defense of the ruling than Posner's. I'd like to be fairly thorough and well grounded, at least at the research level, though of course not all of it will make its way into the piece.

Thanks! I hope everyone's enjoying the piece so far. I've been distracted by other issues for a bit, and haven't had a lot of blogging time anyway, so the project has begun more slowly than I intended. But I hope in the next few weeks to start building up a head of steam on it, so to speak.