Ruth Bader Ginsburg vs. U.S. Constitution

Steve Hayward’s cookin’ with gas over at Powerline :

“But the prize for this week’s liberal obtuseness about the Constitution goes to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who told an Egyptian television audience that ‘I would not look to the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.’ Instead, ‘I might look at the constitution of South Africa. That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, had an independent judiciary.’”

Hayward comments, “Yes, it does include an independent judiciary and a long list of positive rights. Then there’s this:

When interpreting the Bill of Rights, a court, tribunal or forum must promote the values that underlie an open and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom; must consider international law; and may consider foreign law.

No wonder Ginsburg likes it so much: it more or less gives judges a blank check to look anywhere they want to reach any result they want.”

Exactly. What a disgrace. And from a Supreme Court Justice! In the less-nauseating but still-dismaying category, there’s this from our President:

“Barack Obama . . . [told] NBC’s Matt Lauer that one reason he hasn’t succeeded in fulfilling his campaign promises to transform the world is that ‘it turns out our Founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change than I would like sometimes.’  It turns out? He’s just discovering this now? (Well, one thing that ‘turns out’ is that the only constitutional law Obama actually taught at the University of Chicago was the equal protection clause. Apparently he skipped over that whole ‘separation of powers’ stuff.)”