Charles P. Pierce: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Ran Out of F*cks to Give a Long Time Ago [View all]

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http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a46677/ruth-bader-ginsburg-donald-trump/

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Ran Out of F*cks to Give a Long Time Ago

And there are different sorts of sins in the Court.
By Charles P. Pierce
Jul 13, 2016


So, it appears that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has sent the flying monkeys aloft because, upon being asked about the possibility of a He, Trump presidency, she told the truth. CNN, via my old J-school pal Joan Biskupic, brings us all the high-level conservative pearl clutching.

It is highly unusual for a justice to make such politically charged remarks, and some critics said she crossed the line. House Speaker Paul Ryan told CNN's Jake Tapper on Tuesday night the comments were "out of place." "For someone on the Supreme Court who is going to be calling balls and strikes in the future based upon whatever the next president and Congress does, that strikes me as inherently biased and out of the realm."

But it takes the ferrets of Fox News to find the useful liberal idiots to chime in on cue.

Ginsburg's comments also left Democratic lawmakers squirming. "We all know that the justices on the Supreme Court have political views. I'm not sure we're well served by them airing them out in the open," Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told Politico. "She may have got out over her skis a little bit and more forthright and political than she should have been. It's very unusual," Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told the outlet. Mainstream media outlets also joined in the chorus of criticism. "However valid her comments may have been, though, and however in keeping with her known political bent, they were still much, much better left unsaid by a member of the Supreme Court," The Washington Post's editorial board said Tuesday. "Politicization, real or perceived, undermines public faith in the impartiality of the courts."

This is one of those days on which I'm glad I was raised Catholic and, therefore, was schooled in the difference between venial and mortal sin. Because anyone who thinks that RBG's honest assessment of the vulgar talking yam is on a par with A.) Antonin Scalia's hunting trips with Dick Cheney, or B.) the majority in Bush v. Gore including one justice (Scalia) whose son got a job with the administration that poppa helped install and another (Thomas) whose wife did, too, needs to seriously examine their consciences more than they did.

I will be told that I am a Bad Analyst because I am essentially arguing that multiple wrongs make a right, but I don't really care. Leave aside the historic reality that the Court always has been politicized, sometimes garishly so, but we are now at the end of a 30-year process in which a well-financed conservative infrastructure restructured the federal court system from top to bottom, seeding it with reliable judges who supported dubious interpretations of laws to which their ideological sponsors were unfriendly.

Ginsberg is not intolerant of conservatives; she and Scalia were opera buddies. But she's 83, sharp as a tack, and a survivor of pancreatic cancer, which generally gives you the same odds as stepping in front of a westbound freight. Her big bag of fcks was empty long ago. She's seen what's happened to the courts first-hand, and she is right to warn us that a Trump administration is just as likely to put the gardener at Mar-A-Lago on the bench as not. Liberals, of course, are supposed to make sure they use the right fork when they sit down to dinner with barbarians.