New York Times: US Constitution is “old and terse”
Old Trooper sent us a link to an opinion piece by Adam Liptak, the New York Time’s Supreme Court correspondent, who laments that the US Constitution is outdated and no longer befitting the shining city on the hill. Of course, his entire premise is based on the opinions of morons;
In a television interview during a visit to Egypt last week, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court seemed to agree. “I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012,” she said. She recommended, instead, the South African Constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the European Convention on Human Rights.
If Ginsburg isn’t a moron, I don’t know morons. It was the Canadian Charter of Rights that allowed the Canadian government to attempt to prosecute Mark Steyn for publicly expressing his opinion, so that’s a real model, isn’t it? It was under the European Convention of Human Rights that Bridgette Bardot was prosecuted five times for expressing her opinion in public.
Of course, the new York Times has a gripe mostly with the Second Amendment;
It has its idiosyncrasies. Only 2 percent of the world’s constitutions protect, as the Second Amendment does, a right to bear arms.
And the heartless Founders didn’t include entitlements in the Constitution;
Americans recognize rights not widely protected, including ones to a speedy and public trial, and are outliers in prohibiting government establishment of religion. But the Constitution is out of step with the rest of the world in failing to protect, at least in so many words, a right to travel, the presumption of innocence and entitlement to food, education and health care.
Since when do natural human rights include an entitlement to food, education and healthcare? I’ve noticed that the South African Bill of Rights has it listed in number 27 of their 32 rights. I wonder how that’s working out for them?
I don’t know it looks like the line for sick call on the day Headquarters Company schedules their quarterly 12 mile road march.
The Times continues;
“America is in danger, I think, of becoming something of a legal backwater,” Justice Michael Kirby of the High Court of Australia said in a 2001 interview. He said that he looked instead to India, South Africa and New Zealand.
I don’t understand the fascination with the opinions of other countries. Our Constitution was written to protect the people from overarching government, most of the rest of the world depends on their governments to protect them from the consequences of their bad choices. They depend on government for their rights, whereas, we recognize the need to be protected from our government’s excesses.
And, oh, Ruth Bader Ginsberg should be impeached for that statement. And as TSO said in an email, the NY Times should become the Montreal Times if they’re so in love with Canada. The Constitution doesn’t begin “We, the New York Times…”
Category: Liberals suck
But the Constitution is out of step with the rest of the world in failing to protect, at least in so many words, a right to travel, the presumption of innocence and entitlement to food, education and health care.
Out of step? Quite the contrary. I’d love for this assclown to travel to most of the places I’ve been, get arrested or detained, and bitch about “presumption of innocence”. And “entitled” to food? Maybe the old phrase from the Bible, “If he shall not work, neither shall he eat” needs to be revisited.
And some of the smartest and wisest people I’ve ever met are those who HAVEN’T spent their entire lives sheltered from the real world, pretending to be so much more “elite” because they prowl the halls of academia.
Frankly, what these clowns want for “rights” aren’t rights at all. Rights are GIVEN BY GOD. These guys just want shit handed to them, cradle to grave.
The NYT couldn’t be more wrong. The problem we face is the utter lack of desire by the political class to actually follow the Constitution.
As Michelle Obama has said reelecting Barack is the most important thing we can do so we can continue to make progress with the federal court system, or words to that effect.
I say that this is exactly why we need to be smart and all become a “Band of Brothers” so to speak to make sure he does not get reelected and also to get rid of a lot of the idiots and Richard Craniums in Congress. What has worked pretty darn well for over 220 some odds years doesn’t need fixing, what a bunch of ass holes
If any have read Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (not the BS of a movie by the same title) it is a government set up by veterans. Government service allows for citizen rights….hence a meritocracy.
The more I think about it the more I like.
Bleed for your country. Then you have the right to speak for it. Otherwise STFU.
What the hell does he mean by the right to travel?
Adam, he’s just butt-hurt that we’re not like “enlightened” Eurotrash who can travel anywhere in the EU, anytime, whereas we need a passport to go to Canada or Mexico now.
Then again, I guess he doesn’t know the EU is about five seconds away from shitting the bed, but hey, whatevs.
Yep, Ginsburg should be on the phone with Kagan right now, trying to figure out a better defense for impeachment than, they messed with the audio.
Oh yeah, open borders is a grand idea.
Yeah……. I also like how the dickheads in government continue to heap law upon law and regulation upon regulation in trying to interpret what the 2nd amendment means when it says “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”.
That’s worked out so well, you know?
We don’t need more laws. We need to cull most of them from the books.
We don’t need a new Constitution. We need ours to be enforced as written. There’s no “interpretation” or “asterix” needed.
We don’t need the government to keep trying to fix something that ain’t broken. Just leave it the fuck alone and let us get on with doing for ourselves as best we can.
I just don’t think I can bear to live any longer in a country that Australian High Court judges don’t look to for God only knows what reason.
NYT lost $39.7 million last CY.
@#11, yeah, in no time at all, the NYT will sell for $1.00/American, much like Newsweek. Bet the stockholders are looking around for the lifeboats, while management keeps rearranging the deck chairs.
Up–no way, man. I’d love to be a fly on the wall of those editor meetings.
“Okay guys, our circulation is for shit, our credibility with the masses is worse. And you know what? That’s cause they’re just not as smart as we are! Now let’s get this meeting wrapped up. I have to go home to my wife…Morgan…Morgan Fairchild. Yeah, that’s it. That’s the ticket!”
Thanks, I just missed spraying my keyboard. Morgan Fairchild…..
Dear Ms Ginsberg,
If the law does not protect me, it no longer protects thee.
Either stay overseas (can anyone nullify her passport while she’s over in Egypt?), or prepare for a smackdown when you come home.
This is the same NYT who corrected VeriSEAL on the nomenclature of SEAL, which they insist is “Seal.” To be fair, they also insist on “Sgt.” and “Nato.”
They informed the SEALs that it’s strictly a matter of style, and according to their guide, the (Wait for it), NYT Manual of Style, “Seal” is correct.
They also claim Garands are “Easily converted” to full auto, and are a preferred weapon of street gangs.
Why anyone bothers to look at it is beyond me.
Soldier allegedly uses Qor’an when his TP runs out. . . INHUMAN BABY KILLER.
Liberals wipe their asses with he constitution: “What? Did that mean something to you?”
This is insane. I grew up in New Zealand and I now live in Australia (aside from the near-impossibility of owning firearms – John Howard screwed up big time on that – a much better place than New Zealand). I’d love to live under a Constitution that protected the inalienable, God-given rights of the individual as the US Constitution does. Travel? Healthcare? Food? Shelter? Aircon and big-screen TVs? These things are not rights, and attempting to make them so condemns someone to slavery to pay for it all. Ginsberg has lost it. She belongs in the 9th Circuit, not the Supreme Court.
Personally, I’d make only two fundamental changes to the US Constitution: lifetime term limits (i.e. two or three terms in your lifetime) for any and all Federal offices; and perhaps spelling out the real meaning of “regulate interstate commerce” so that wilfully illiterate jurists, congressweasels, and Presidents can’t misinterpret it.
I’d also get rid of the income tax and I’m not sure about the Senate being elected by popular vote (rather than appointed by the State legislatures), but the first two are by far the more important IMHO.
The one area mentioned that I would take issue with not calling a right, is travel. The freedom of movement within, between or outside of states, without needing to ask or receive some level of government approval, is fundamental to a free society.
I suggest Liptak and Ginsberg move their asses to one of those countries they believe is so superior.
The NYT editorial staff can go with them…maybe they can all rent a big rambling old POS house to live in…real cozy.
South Africa, perhaps?
You guys are just misunderstanding.
Ginsberg said”…if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012″.
What she really meant was that some 200 years ago when those backwoods illiterates were robbing and fleecing the Indian folk the constitution was fine.
But now in 2012, using her as an example, no single minority figure can possibly ever achieve anything and therefore has to be taken care of and who better to do it than the brilliant minds of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.
Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin have got nothing on them.
In a way the old bat is onto something. If I understood the whole interview correctly, they were discussing drafting constitutions of sorts for muslim countries after all these power turnovers. The US constitution would not be applicable there, because many of the core beliefs and tenets found in that document are simply ALIEN to moslems. Free speech, equal rights, religious freedom, etc, are all anathema to the moslem world. But she was wrong about pretty much everything else she said. The woman is another socialist who bought into the one world syndrome a long time ago.
What a concept. Take old and soon to be if not already senile judges who can barely stay awake as the highest court in the land. WTF.
“. But the Constitution is out of step with the rest of the world…” should of stopped right there. Good. Nothing more needed.
It is a governing document for OUR people not the world’s. It is distinct, copied, but its spirit never duplicated.