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It’s only a matter of time before liberals blame RBG for not retiring sooner

It’s only a matter of time before liberals blame RBG for not retiring sooner

It’s already started: “Ruth Bader Ginsburg made a choice that turned out wrong…. Now there is a good chance that her replacement will be chosen by Donald Trump”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQzClRA2QLM

A reader forwarded me a blistering article from far-left Mother Jones magazine excoriating Ruth Bader Ginsburg for not retiring prior to 2014, when Democrats controlled the White House and Senate, allowing them at the time to appoint a Ginsburg-like liberal Justice.

The article by Stephanie Mencimer was from November 2018, and seemed a precursor to what is to come, What the Cult of Ruth Bader Ginsburg Got Wrong. The article was blistering — but I repeat myself — asserting that Ginsburg created a cult of media personality that concealed how frail she was to perpetuate the image of “Notorious RBG”. The article first lays out the history of calls from liberals for Ginsburg to retire in her late 70s:

The calls for Ginsburg to step down began in 2011 when Randall Kennedy, a Harvard law professor and former clerk to the late Thurgood Marshall, wrote a piece in The New Republic gently urging Ginsburg, then 78, to retire while Obama was in office. (He had suggested the same of Justice Stephen Breyer, now 80.) Kennedy was publicly airing private concerns among Democrats that it could be Ginsburg’s last chance to be replaced by a Democrat.

After Obama’s 2012 reelection, the Ginsburg retirement calls came with a new urgency. In December 2013, the National Journal ran a piece titled, Justice Ginsburg: Resign Already!, in which writer James Oliphant observed that the passage of Obamacare would likely hand Senate control to the Republicans in 2014, thus preventing Obama from naming a Ginsburg successor. His concerns were echoed by prominent liberal legal scholars, notably Erwin Chemerinsky, now dean of the University of California-Berkeley law school, who wrote in early 2014 in the Los Angeles Times, “I do not minimize how hard it will be for Justice Ginsburg to step down from a job that she loves and has done so well since 1993. But the best way for her to advance all the things she has spent her life working for is to ensure that a Democratic president picks her successor.”

In response to the retirement calls (mostly from men), Ginsburg gave an interview to the New York Times’ Adam Liptak laying out the reasons she planned to ignore them. “There will be a president after this one and I’m hopeful that that president will be a fine president,” she said. Ginsburg added that she planned to keep working “as long as I can do the job full steam.”

Mencimer connects Ginsburg’s refusal to retire to the rise of the Notorious RBG personna:

In retrospect, it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that the making of Notorious RBG happened at a time when many liberals were begging her to step down. The canonization began in 2013, after Ginsburg issued a furious dissent in Shelby County v. Holder, a case that gutted a big chunk of the Voting Rights Act. Inspired, New York University law student Shana Knizhnik launched a “Notorious R.B.G” Tumblr. The meme took off and ultimately led to a 2015 book, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which Knizhnik co-authored with fellow fangirl Carmon, then an MSNBC reporter.

Ginsburg has since been tattooed on women’s arms, immortalized in song and a children’s book, and featured on SNL. She’s had her face plastered on everything from tote bags to water bottles. This merchandising could not have happened without the justice’s blessing; the law gives her a fair amount of control over the use of her image, as she well knows. Rather than start copyright battles, Ginsburg has encouraged her cult following. She assisted Carmon and Knizhnik with their book, appeared in the CNN documentary and makes a cameo in On the Basis of Sex, carries an RBG tote bag in public, distributes RBG T-shirts to friends and admirers, and generally has reveled in her celebrity.

Perhaps the savviest element of Ginsburg’s pushback against calls for her retirement is the promotion of her workout regime. Details of it appear in Notorious RBG, and Ginsburg allowed the RBG documentary makers to film her doing pushups and tossing a medicine ball—proof, the film implies, that she is nowhere near death’s door.

This media personna of Notorious RBG was something of a charade, according to Mencimer, because Ginsburg in reality was more frail than she allowed to be known:

Ginsburg’s turn as an unlikely pop culture heroine has been facilitated by social media, but it could never have happened were cameras allowed in the Supreme Court. If you pay attention to Ginsburg’s public appearances, it’s pretty clear many are carefully stage managed; video of her is tactfully edited. She’s usually shown sitting graciously in a chair, or linking arms with someone as she walks, as though from affection and not from need. But in the courtroom, away from the cameras, she projects a very different image—the one that probably inspired all those liberal lawyers to her call for her timely retirement seven years ago.

About a week before her latest fall, I sat through a pair of tedious Supreme Court arguments about arbitration, so I got to see the Ginsburg most Americans do not. She was engaged in the arguments, but her speech is increasingly difficult to understand. As has long been the case, people strained to listen when she asked a question—a hot bench went quiet.

When a Supreme Court session adjourns, the public isn’t allowed to depart until all the justices have left the bench. After the arbitration arguments were gaveled to a close, I got up to leave with the rest of the onlookers. But then everyone stopped. All of the justices had left except for Ginsburg, who was having trouble getting out of her chair. There was an embarrassed silence as members of the press, the bar, and the public tried not to gape as Ginsburg mustered the courage to descend a single step off the bench and finally disappeared behind the red curtain. The contrast between the real-world Ginsburg and the comic-book superheroine of social media was striking….

It’s not considered polite to point this out, but Ginsburg has been falling asleep on the bench during oral arguments for years. Back in 2006, she dozed off during a redistricting argument for a good 15 minutes—long enough for the courtroom artist to sketch her in repose. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank wrote, “It’s lucky for Ginsburg that the Supreme Court has so far refused to allow television in the courtroom, for her visit to the land of nod would have found its way onto late-night shows.”

The result, Mencimer concludes, is that the window of opportunity closed on Obama being able to get a liberal replacement through the Senate when Repblicans took control in 2014:

The RBG action figures and the pushup videos will be a paltry balm for the damage likely to be done to racial equality, LGBT rights, and reproductive freedoms if Trump is allowed to replace Ginsburg. By refusing to gracefully transition off the court when Obama could have named her successor, she has raised the very real risk of her seat being filled by someone who will spend a generation trying to undo all she worked for.

If that happens, RBG will become truly notorious.

That was in 2018. It’s now 2020, and Ginsburg has died with Trump as president. It’s not certain that Trump will be able to both nominate and have confirmed a conservative Justice to fill the vacancy, but he’s going to try. And if Trump wins reelection, it’s a certainty.

Already, there are rumblings of blaming Ginsburg hanging on so long. That blame is couched in terms of “don’t blame her” but then blaming her. New York Magazine’s The Cut has an article by Rebecca Traister that does just that, It Shouldn’t Have Come Down to Her:

As we quietly finished the meal, our phones buzzing with grief and shock, my father showed me the messages he was already receiving from fellow liberals and leftists, describing in vivid terms how angry they were at her….

This rage toward a beloved, history-making woman who just died will feel — and will be — profane and grotesque. It will be more than a little sexist, because blaming every bad outcome on an old woman you deem selfish in her professional self-determination, and on the Resistance Moms who “Yas Queen” her, is an endlessly gratifying strain of liberal misogyny.

It will also, to some degree, be fair.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg made a choice that turned out wrong. She wanted to keep doing the work she loved and was good at and that mattered; she didn’t want to stop before she was ready. Like so many others, she believed Hillary Clinton would likely win in 2016. And like so many others, she was wrong about that. Now there is a good chance that her replacement will be chosen by Donald Trump, a president who came to power on malignant racism and sexism and who will gain, in her death, the ability to offer America’s right wing what they have worked toward for 60 years: nearly full power to roll back, via the court, the disruptive gains made by the social movements of the 20th century on behalf of marginalized people.

So I understand why people will be furious at Ruth Bader Ginsburg and why they will say so loudly, in raised tones that convey their own assurance that they would have made the right choice, had they been her.

Liberal journalist Emily Bazelon is questioning why Ginsburg didn’t retire earlier, something Mencimer from Mother Jones notes is contrary to what Bazelon was saying back in 2013, when she called such talk sexist:

Bazelin has an op-ed in the NY Times which follows the blame her, but don’t blame her format:

The timing of Ginsburg’s death on Friday at 87, from complications of a recurrence of pancreatic cancer, and President Trump’s determination to quickly confirm a successor, have prompted a gnawing question among many liberals: Why didn’t Ginsburg resign years earlier, when President Barack Obama could have named a nominee for her seat? Ginsburg’s love for what she called her “good job” — serving as a Supreme Court justice — and her focus on the representation of women help explain her decision to stay. The epic political battle over confirmation could affect the results of the November election and change the trajectory of American law for decades….

A few years later, when Ginsburg was in her early 80s and President Barack Obama was in his second term, calls for her to retire sounded mostly from male academics and writers. But Ginsburg by then had new celebrity status as the Notorious R.B.G….

After interviewing people who knew Ginsburg, I wrote an article for Slate in late 2013 arguing that the public calls for her to retire then, however sensible (and now prescient), wouldn’t work. She was the senior member of the court’s liberal bloc, with the power to assign and more often write important dissents. She reached the pinnacle of her profession by refusing to let other people tell her what she could do….

Then Trump defeated Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 presidential election, upending the gamble Ginsburg had taken. “I think that Mother, like many others, expected that Hillary Clinton would win the nomination and the presidency, and she wanted the first female president to name her successor,” Jane Ginsburg emailed me on Sunday.

(added) J.J. Goldberg in the leftist Jewish Forward writes, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Tragic Mistake:

Her one great mistake was to overestimate her vitality and underestimate the national abyss that lay ahead. In so miscalculating she let her own needs, immediate and urgent, supersede a theoretical future threat that might unmake her legacy, undo the good she had wrought for Americans and threaten the future of American democracy. Her miscalculation now seems likely to become a tragedy of near-Shakespearean proportions.

So blame her, don’t blame her. It’s hard to see how that approach will hold up if and when Trump fills the vacancy with a conservative female jurist. It will fester, and it will not take long for “blame her, don’t blame her” to become “blame her.”

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Comments

Ruth Bader overplayed her hand wanting another woman, Hillary, to be able to nominate her successor. Oops.

“from far-left Mother Jones magazine excoriating Ruth Bader Ginsburg for not retiring prior to 2014”

Nelson Muntz has a ready answer for that one,

What’s funny is that the Dhimmi-crat faithful’s utterly inappropriate and totally overwrought veneration and deification of Ginsburg, into a secular living saint and partisan icon (“Notorious RBG”) likely went to Ginsburg’s head and fueled the hubris and narcissism that kept her on the Court, long past her expiration date. It’s obvious that Ginsburg wanted to remain the subject of Dhimmi-crats’ adulation and veneration, for as long as possible. That’s pure narcissism.

And, Ginsburg’s alleged dying declaration, a “fervent wish” to be replaced by Trump’s successor, matches her wayward and contrived jurisprudence in its blatantly political tone and in its total disregard for the U.S. Constitution. What arrogance — I mean, let’s just forget about the U.S. Constitution and the President’s totally legal and historical prerogative to fill a vacant SCOTUS seat — Ginsburg ensures that a statement is put out, post-death, about her “fervent wish;” — a conceit totally grounded in emotion, in blatant political zealotry, in narcissism and in self-entitlement — everything except a reference to the only legal document that actually matters.

    notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital in reply to guyjones. | September 21, 2020 at 9:46 pm

    That’s a perfect yet practical description of a psychopath.

    Also re: “Ginsburg has since been tattooed on women’s arms, immortalized in song and a children’s book, and featured on SNL. She’s had her face plastered on everything from tote bags to water bottles. This merchandising could not have happened without the justice’s blessing; the law gives her a fair amount of control over the use of her image, as she well knows. Rather than start copyright battles, Ginsburg has encouraged her cult following. She assisted Carmon and Knizhnik with their book, appeared in the CNN documentary and makes a cameo in On the Basis of Sex, carries an RBG tote bag in public, distributes RBG T-shirts to friends and admirers, and generally has reveled in her celebrity…..”

    puhiawa in reply to guyjones. | September 22, 2020 at 12:08 am

    The fervent wish declaration now appears to be a fabrication arising from Schumer’s chambers. The death bed declaration has now become as much as 4 days before….and the sand bagging and prevarications begin.
    In actuality Ginsburg cared about process and realized that the far left was as dangerous as the far right. Changes in the presidents and Senate is how that happens.

    hopeful in reply to guyjones. | September 22, 2020 at 12:12 pm

    hubris and narcissism. Exactly so, Guy Jones. Thanks for the excellent post.

I don’t know about “blaming” her, but she could have retired and actually tried to enjoy her final years without the burden of being a justice of the Supreme Court. Who wants to work until the day you die? I guess she thought she was THAT important.

Sad way to end your life, if you ask me.

    notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital in reply to Colonel Travis. | September 21, 2020 at 9:43 pm

    Psychopaths do.

    The get their self-importance from large powerful orgs, like the SS you know.

    Who wants to work until the day you die?

    Anyone who thinks their work is important, and not merely a way to put food on the table. One of my heroes, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, denounced the very concept of retirement, and declared that if a person is no longer being productive in some way then his continued existence becomes pointless. He certainly worked 20-hour days until his stroke at the age of almost 90, and continued to work as much as he could until his second stroke just short of his 92nd birthday.

      DaveGinOly in reply to Milhouse. | September 22, 2020 at 1:28 am

      And the community, out of their reverence for Rebbe’s beliefs, allowed him to starve to death because his “continued existence had become pointless.”

      I think that you would agree, Milhouse, that our heroes aren’t perfect. They are all wrong about something.

        Milhouse in reply to DaveGinOly. | September 23, 2020 at 11:43 am

        And the community, out of their reverence for Rebbe’s beliefs, allowed him to starve to death because his “continued existence had become pointless.”

        What on earth are you talking about? He received the best care available, as was right and proper. The point is that he kept working as long as he was able, rather than retire just because he’d reached a certain age and financial security and no longer had to work. He worked because he was doing good, not just because he had to.

      tom_swift in reply to Milhouse. | September 22, 2020 at 3:37 am

      And Edward Teller, the hydrogen bomb guy, said (many years later, when he was head of Lawrence Livermore) something to the effect that, in common with a great many old men, he had some good ideas and some bad ideas; and that some of his ideas were undoubtedly bad ones, but he had no idea which ones.

      It can take some courage to acknowledge when one’s day has just plain passed, and that it’s time to move to the spectator seats and get out of the world’s way.

    My grandfather loved his work (he was an attorney in private practice) and worked until the day he died. He did not work because needed the money, but he needed the intellectual stimulation, the interactions with other attorneys, the joy of helping his clients. Had he retired ten years earlier, he would probably have died nine years earlier! The work kept him fulfilled and alive.

I’m trying very hard to remain respectful here.
But seriously, this is SO DAMN FUNNY!

notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital | September 21, 2020 at 9:48 pm

The Professor needs to write an editorial of how there is plenty of blame to go around for all the DEMS.

OT, sorta, but it bugs me how they always state things like this as established facts:

Donald Trump, a president who came to power on malignant racism and sexism

Whenever I’ve tried to find their evidence for such claims, the only thing they’ve offered is misinterpretation, statements taken out of context, and wild paranoid fantasies.

    notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital in reply to CorkyAgain. | September 21, 2020 at 10:30 pm

    They are doing self-projection.

    They are always so self unaware and arrogant, along with never doing self-reflection…..

    They never know all they are telling the world about who they really are.

    Milhouse in reply to CorkyAgain. | September 21, 2020 at 11:21 pm

    To them these are established facts. They take them for granted and never think of questioning them, and this explains their otherwise inexplicable behavior. If you and I thought these things were actually true we might behave the same way they do.

    Observer in reply to CorkyAgain. | September 22, 2020 at 9:54 am

    According to the left, Trump is a “malignant racist” because he wanted the southern border secured, and said that many of the illegal aliens using it to cross into the U.S. were rapists and other criminals. Of course, illegal aliens come in all races, and as the prison populations of the border states clearly demonstrate, many illegal aliens are in fact violent criminals and rapists who come here to commit crimes. There is nothing “racist” — malignant or otherwise — in stating this obvious truth.

    Trump is also a “malignant racist” because he attempted to impose a “Muslim ban.” Never mind that the travel ban that Trump signed did not in fact ban Muslims from coming to the U.S. It simply banned certain travelers from majority-Muslim countries, where vetting was not possible, from coming to the U.S., as they posed too great of a security risk. Over 95% of Muslims were unaffected by the so-called “Muslim ban.”

    As for the sexism charge, this presumably refers to Trump’s recorded private remarks to Billy Bush about how if a man became rich and famous enough, some women would essentially let that man do anything to them, including grabbing them by their private parts. It may have been indiscreet of Trump to say it, but we all know that it is true. It is the reason why hordes of young women follow rock stars and pro athletes from city to city, and throw themselves at them shamelessly. And Trump was hardly the first man to notice or comment upon this phenomenon.

    The left’s slanders against Trump have always been more a case of projection than anything else. They are outrageously outraged at Trump’s vulgar comments about grabbing a woman between the legs, yet when a Biden staffer (Tara Reade) came forward with a claim that Biden had actually done this to her when she worked for him, they just shrug it off as unimportant.

    But the left will keep repeating its lies about Trump, because it’s all they have.

She was a racist, liberal hack. Told the Egyptians not to look at the US Constitution when they were writing one for themselves.
Hired one black person her whole time on all the benches she sat on. Never hired a single black person until after she was on the SC. And then only hired one.
She probably ran every time she saw Justice Thomas. Put her in a potters field, it’s all she really deserves.

    notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital in reply to 4fun. | September 21, 2020 at 10:35 pm

    Hear. Hear.

    Very telling is her mid-1990s interview comment where I’m sure the editor changed it from “Democrat” President to “fine” President.

    Remember it was only a few years before Al Gore and the DEMS publicly tried to steal the 2000 presidential election….

Perhaps she had an epiphany, and didn’t want to leave the Choice of her replacement to President “Burden”. People change, for the better.

Obviously RBG is to blame, but this is also yet another example of the left’s media dominance backfiring on the left.

Any one who interacted with RBG knew the workout-shtick reportage was pure propoganda. She presented my judge an award in 2008, and was so physically and mentally fragile she had trouble reading a prepared speech. Let me say that again, in 2008.

But the left propogated a lie for her to protect her. Because she was one of them. Because she was one of them, they didn’t make her inability to perform her job an issue on the nightly news. They didn’t mock her for falling asleep during oral arguments or pressure her to leave.

Do you think a conservative justice who couldn’t stay awake would have been similarly protected by the news media? Wouldn’t be a but of jokes on SNL or some nightly comedy show? To ask is to answer.

But here’s the thing…by protecting RBG, by lying for her….the media allowed RBG to act selfishly and to do this to them.

Too bad, so sad.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the poster child for self-indulgent hubris.

She believed that she was indispensable. Only she could save the Union. She cared more for herself than she did her “cause”. And, after her husband died, it is possible, if not probable, that all she had to define herself was he position.

When political pressure was being brought to bear to force her retirement, certain political factions created the cult of Saint Ruth and canonized her, to insulate her from political pressure. When Hillary was the next presumptive President, the leadership figured it had time to wait and Ginsburg would step down, But Trump surprised them and won the election. Now they all had a problem.

So, was Ginsburg to blame? Partially. Was the Democrat power structure to blame? Partially. They all gambled, for their own reasons and they lost.

She chose—badly.

Wondered why Buzzie didn’t ride off into the sunset and let the seditious gay Kenyan commie appoint a third SC Justice not qualified for weekend Parking Court. Read an article claiming she was afraid of who he’d appoint next.

    Geologist in reply to judgeroybean. | September 22, 2020 at 8:17 pm

    I’ve done weekend traffic court. No one nominated for the Supreme Court is too incompetent to handle weekend traffic court, as long as they are smart enough to defer to the clerks. Oops, let me withdraw this comment, a lot of Dem judges are too stupid not to mess up with a smooth operation. Never mind!

A matter of time? People were doing that before her waste of a communist carcass was even cold.

Coulda, woulda, shoulda. She made her choice. No one has invented a time machine yet. Move on.

I wonder if rbg felt a sense of dread when PDJT was inaugurated. I wonder if she felt the way Antonius Block did in ‘The Seventh Seal,’ knowing she would have to make her chess game last 4+ years. That must have been a tremendous burden, but it was one she helped bring on herself. It seems a possible irony coming from this situation is the once venerated Justice is going to have her legacy tarnished by losing that chess game (even though we all do eventually), but really what will tarnish it is TDS.

I heard in Ginsburg’s will, she changed her mind and retired in 2015.

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,…” said Chief Justice John Roberts in 2017.

So much for Chief Justice John Robert’s opinions…

“Donald Trump, a president who came to power on malignant racism and sexism and who will gain, in her death, the ability to offer America’s right wing what they have worked toward for 60 years: nearly full power to roll back, via the court, the disruptive gains made by the social movements of the 20th century on behalf of marginalized people.”

These malicious libelers deserved to lose and have their inept policies swept away.

The epic political battle over confirmation could affect the results of the November election and change the trajectory of American law for decades . . .

The utter madness of investing anything affecting government policy decisions in an unelected oligarchy should be clear—we’re in a position where government is perverted by one ossified, crabby old lady who never fully realized that the Depression of her formative years is long gone.

a theoretical future threat that might unmake her legacy, undo the good she had wrought for Americans and threaten the future of American democracy.

Absurd. An unelected court composed of people who cannot be removed even by the voters can never be the bedrock of any democratic state, or any republic.

RBG kind of blows Roberts statement there are no conservative judges or Leftist judges out of the water. Not one Leftist believes it.

She didn’t retire because she wanted to keep working and being a Supreme Court Judge is a sweet job. She probably got chauffeured around and had body guards.

There are countless examples throughout history of Supreme Court judges who served while senile or completely insane. William Rehnquist was a great example. That’s the problem with lifetime appointments.

MoeHowardwasright | September 22, 2020 at 6:37 am

RBG served past her expiration date, as did William O. Douglas. The fact is that the Clerks are the ones who were writing the opinions and forwarding the votes. My guess, she hasn’t remembered a relevant argument before the court in quite some time. This episode is a relevant point for amending the Constitution to require judges to retire at 75.

The Friendly Grizzly | September 22, 2020 at 6:39 am

My best friend is to the left, but is capable of thinking. In short, he is not one to mouth the clichés and talking points. He laments RBG’s passing. I told him that I felt she was a selfish, vain old crone.

He asked what I meant. I replied that she knew her health was faling and had been for many years. But, would she resign during the Obama administration. Nope. She was holding on to see if her replacement coulld be chosen by a female president. The result was that now her replacement would be selected by a man he dislikes although he cannot really explain why in concrete detail.

From my perspective, both the Democrats and the Republicans have reasons to rejoice.

Republicans: some candidates are at least somewhat good on the Constitution. Some have said religion will influence them, which should please the Evangelicals, even if it’s the “wrong” religion.

Democrats: More than average number of female candidates, “minorities”, and potential “first [insert Exalted Minority here]”. Some are even two-fers.

“There will be a president after this one and I’m hopeful that that president will be a fine president,”

Another RBG quote casting serious doubt about her reported death bed wish for deferring the appointment of her replacement until after the election and once the “next” president is installed. It just wasn’t in her nature. Resonates like the sound of a cell phone going off during a movie. “Turn that thing off!”

Pride goeth before the casket.

A woman who fervently believed that she rather than the Almighty could decide when she left this Earth.

Women plan and God laughs, to coin a phrase.

notamemberofanyorganizedpolicital | September 22, 2020 at 9:47 am

RNC Runs Brutal Ad of Democrats Demanding SCOTUS Seat Be Filled

via Weasil Zippers

https://www.air.tv/watch?v=x3RZTT7zTb-WYSEyvIzh-A

Don’t they realize that on the tarmac lynch and Bill made a deal. Ruth wanted to retire but couldn’t until one of the Democrats get voted in again. Elections have consequences

RBG went a lot further in her career than practically all of her peers, not to mention the past and current bar (me included). That said, no one is reeling off the top five or ten cases she authored for a majority of the Supreme Court. (The best anyone can identify is the majority opinion that struck down Virginia Military Institute’s all-male admission policy.) Instead, we are treated to stories about “stinging dissents” and “dissent collars”–which tells you that she did not leave nearly as much substance behind as the current hype would suggest.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg will not be known for any rigorous over-arching theory of jurisprudence in the mold of Antonin Scalia or even the judicial navel-gazing of Anthony Kennedy. Instead, she will be first known as a reliable vote for the leftist bloc on the Court, especially for the abortion cases. Second, she will be known for how she left the Court–clinging to office well into old age and in the face of a terminal diagnosis, and dying at perhaps the most disruptive time possible, six weeks before a presidential election.

It takes humility and professional maturity to place the needs of the institution you serve and people who come before it ahead of your own desires. If she retired after the 2012 election, she could have continued to serve by designation on the lower federal courts of appeal, hearing as many or as few cases as she wanted. The disruption to the Supreme Court of sudden death would be avoided (although confirmation of a successor would still be a circus). Her chambers would be smaller, she would be down to one law clerk, but she would be out of the limelight and her ever ache and pain would not be analyzed endlessly on national news. Ruth, for all of her acumen, failed to learn the most important life lesson her predecessor Byron White had to offer: know when to go.

They were calling for her retirement so that Obama could appoint a Ginsburg-like liberal Justice. Obama did do that — Sonia Sotomayor is very much a Ginsburg protege and her writings are an echo of the manner in which Ginsburg wrote. It remains to be seen how complete Ginsburg’s training of Sotomayor was.

Sorry mate, but they’ve already blamed, shamed, and cursed RBG for not retiring under the Obama administration!

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of Berkeley law school:

But the best way for her to advance all the things she has spent her life working for is to ensure that a Democratic president picks her successor.”

And Roberts has the temerity to say “there are no Obama judges.”

Much like the Supreme Court, you guys are ruthless

A matter of time? It was minutes.

https://twitter.com/BadBunnyTwitch/status/1307103243953152005

I had to scroll back through 3 days of Facebook comments to find it.

Know when to hold ’em.
Know when to fold ’em.

It’s always problematic when a public official begins to believe his or her own press……and it doesn’t matter what side of the aisle they sit on.

I came across a similar post in regard to honoring RBG’s “death bed wish”. My first thought and response was the following:

It does not hold water that if Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s last wish as reported by her Granddaughter was actually made. With the tributes attested to the brilliance of this woman and also her predisposition to voice her political bias in her later years, had she wanted this to be a her last public request, she more than anyone would have put in writing, had it notarized and filed with a third party to be released to the news media on her death. Even a much lower court as is the TV show “Judge Judy” would not give any credibility to a second hand verbal statement. The dynamics of a family member putting that out there makes just another He Said, She Said; Not legally binding and therefore doesn’t exist. Additionally, considering her health, had she wanted to actually see a transfer of her chair under the Democrat administration, she could have resigned in 2014 and spent the time writing and continue to enjoy being revered at her speaking engagements. As it is, her granddaughter is just another one of this generations SJW’s and obviously a Democrat who subscribes to their mantra “By Any Means Necessary”.

After his 1989 defeat as he sought his fourth term in City Hall, Koch was asked if he would ever run again. No, he said, then added, “The people have spoken and they must be punished.”