I just love this editorial from the Richmond Times Dispatch, a paper which I loved during my time in college in Virginia.

Stifling Dissent

In a recent speech on foreign soil, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said people who disagree with her are dangerous, irrational, slavery-loving, bigoted threats to the country.

Not in so many words, mind you. Ms. Ginsburg is far too nuanced for that. But she did say that she and her former colleague, Sandra Day O'Connor, had been the target of death threats (actually, a single menacing posting on an Internet chatroom) from the "irrational fringe" -- and that Republican Congressmen "fuel the irrational fringe" by opposing the growing practice of interpreting the Constitution in light of foreign law.

Many people have disputed the idea that Justices should base their rulings on cues from foreign countries rather than the American Constitution. Ms. Ginsburg noted that one of them was Roger Taney, in his infamous Dred Scott decision. (Because Taney was wrong about slavery, and he also believed that 2 + 2 = 4, we evidently must conclude that mathematical equation also is incorrect.) She pointed out that defenders of Apartheid in South Africa, where she gave her talk, resisted calls from abroad to end the segregation system. Oh, and Justice Antonin Scalia disagrees with her, too. Those people are all alike.

Ms. Ginsburg's thinly veiled attempt to establish guilt by association is a shopworn technique. It was exploited most famously by Joseph McCarthy to intimidate those who disagreed with him. Joseph Stalin also used guilt by association to send potential resisters of Soviet Communist tyranny to the gulag. Recently an Italian commission concluded that the Soviet Union was behind the attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II.

We are not, of course, in any way suggesting that people who share Ms. Ginsburg's approach are McCarthyite Communist mass-murdering anti-Catholic plotters of papicide. We wouldn't stoop to that level.

Why does she?

Bravo!

If Justice Ginsburg feels that criticism of the Judiciary by members of the co-equal Legislative Branch of government and (even lmore unacceptable) We, the People, is unacceptable and a danger to her safety, I'm sure she can find some court case or law from North Korea, Iran, Cuba, or the People's Republic of China that she and her peers can use to trump both the clear language of the First Amendment that permits such speech and Article III, which gives Congress specific power to check the Judicial Branch.

And if she finds that she cannot get a majority behind her unAmerican goal of suppressing and delegitimizing criticism of the courts on the clearly specious grounds of an epidemic of violence and threats against judges, perhaps she can safeguard her own miserable hide by resigning. I'm sure the Justice Department already has a suitable slate of possible replacements to send over to the president for his consideration.

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Posted by: Greg at 05:21 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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