Apology Is Welcome, Ruth

I don't think it is particularly common for Supreme Court associate justices to apologize, certainly not for their decisions and never for public statements.  That is because, of course, the justices don't make public statements outside their judicial opinions from the bench.  Typically.

However, liberals know no rules and know less about decorum.  In an interview with the New York Times a few days back, Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Lockstep-Liberal Four on the current Court, weighed in on the upcoming presidential election.  She actually said this:

“I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president.  For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.”

Ginsburg didn't end there, making a joking reference to her late husband's assumed recommendation that if Trump were to be elected it would be time to "move to New Zealand."

It is time for her to make a real apology, out loud and crystal-clear, to Trump and to the nation for that interview.  I don't know what her view of the role of the members of the Court may be, but commenting on presidential candidates from major parties (or minor parties, for that matter), is incredibly beyond the pale.

I really don't care what she may think of Donald Trump, and we all could have assumed that she wasn't voting for him, certainly based on her voting record on the Court.  But historically, the justices have kept their mouths shut, especially when it came to political battles in the other branches of government.

By bashing Trump, she has pretty much explicitly endorsed Hillary Clinton.  Now that in itself is pretty stupid, given Mrs. Clinton's toxic combination of incompetence, corruption and greed.  But what happens, say, when the FBI recommends an indictment of her based on the Clinton Foundation slushing money to the Clintons from foreign governments, and on Hillary dishing out State Department favors in exchange for Bill's speeches and donations to the Foundation?

You can just bet with the army of lawyers Hillary goes everywhere with (possibly only two when she visits the loo, though), any charges and subsequent conviction would quickly get appealed up, eventually, to the old SCOTUS.  So who then holds up a transcript of the Ginsburg interview and says "You have to recuse yourself on his one -- you cannot rule on a case before you where the defendant is someone you have openly endorsed."  Who protects the USA in "United States of America v. Hillary Rodham Clinton"?

It won't be Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

There is time.  Mrs. Ginsburg needs to haul herself in front of an actual microphone and apologize profusely to the nation and to Mr. Trump for her words, including the joking reference to New Zealand.

Of course, this is the same justice who advised Egypt that she wouldn't recommend the use of the Constitution she took an oath to defend, as a basis for their own newly-reconstituted government.  She didn't apologize for that one either.

Liberals don't apologize.  But if ever there were a place to start, this would be it.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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