The war of words between the Justice Department and the nine dissenting states intensified today after the modifications to the proposed consent decree.
But a fire-breathing agent with the United States Forest Service, who is "determined to prove there's a war on" between the government and dissenting political rebels, is itching to pin the crime on a band of survivalists camped out in the woods.
But the mild-mannered host did serve as a mollifying force between a few dissenting white callers and Mr. Savage, whose method of dealing with critics was to shout them down and insult them.
It is on this point that perhaps the first hint of dissenting opinions between the group of clergy and the larger citizenry was slightly exposed.
As scripted by Black Watch writer Gregory Burke, the soldiers occupy a studiedly neutral position within the knotted politics of the time: Hook's unit are supporting a brutal raid on a house in the nationalist Falls Road by vicious RUC officers; later, Hook's ordeal will see him pass through a loyalist stronghold and become a wedge between dissenting Official and Provisional IRA factions.
This issue also seemed to mark a divide between the majority and the dissent.
The judgment of history on the Rehnquist court, now in its 15th year, may very well depend on the court's performance in this case: on the sobriety of its tone, the persuasiveness of its reasoning and the unanimity of result or, at the least, the civility between the majority and the dissent.
That suggests a position midway between the Court and the dissent.
"The unusual thing about this opinion, though, is that there is such a strong difference of opinion between the majority and the dissent as to whether the prosecutors behaved unethically," Gershowitz noted.
Although the DPP passed a resolution to ban all factions within the party in 2006, the dissent between former members of different factions was still present and was thought to be one of the factors that led to DPP's loss in the presidential election.
