This is in response to Jonathan Manser's letter to the editor. After reading his opinion, I wasn't sure whether I should laugh, cry or pack up my things and move out of the country. Some people, it appears, just don't seem to care what the law says.

The hypocrisy Manser spoke of is in Gore's court, as he has demonstrated since day one of this dispute. Gore began pushing for a hand recount after he had lost the automatic machine recount by claiming that "all votes should count." By that, of course, he meant only votes in the most Democratic of precincts in three counties. So a partial hand recount was done and he lost again.

Well, Mr. Gore got clever along the way and decided that maybe having all votes count wasn't such a good idea, so he ordered his cronies to do whatever necessary to disqualify overseas military ballots on technicalities (such as a lack of postage -- too bad ballots from ships and military bases are shipped in bundles and never recieve postage), knowing full well that those ballots would hurt his chance of stealing the election.

And God forbid we recount in the heavily Republican counties. He then pressed to have a select group of ballots from the heavily Democratic counties recounted again. Fortunately for America, justice was served when a Leon County judge ruled that 14,000 ballots from heavily Democratic counties did not have to be counted yet again, preventing further violation of the 14th Amendment by the Dems.

Also, Manser's claim that 5,000 military ballots were illegally tampered with by Republicans is completely wrong. An election official allowed Republican officials to correct the validation codes on 15,000 absentee ballot request forms because of a computer error affecting only Republican requests. This is not the first time this has been allowed to happen.

There was absolutely no tampering with actual ballots as Manser claims. George W. Bush has won the vote in Florida three times now. Gore has never been ahead. Yet Gore persists with the legal wrangling to somehow, some way steal this election. It's not going to happen, Al. Americans are tired of the trial lawyers and sleazy attorneys trying to eke this one out for you.

Concede now, and you might be able to save a shred a dignity. Let our president-elect, George W. Bush, get on with the job he was elected to do.