America is in danger “of becoming something of a legal backwater,” a justice of the High Court of Australia, Michael Kirby, is quoted as telling the New York Times . His comment is in a scoop that ran under the headline “?’We the People’ Loses Appeal With People Around the World.” The story follows up on an interview Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave to Al-Hayat TV in Egypt. In the interview she said that were she drafting a constitution in the year 2012, “I would not look to the United States Constitution.” Instead she commended to her viewers the constitution of South Africa, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of Canada. Justice Ginsburg’s remarks went viral on the web among those who thought they were inappropriate for a justice bound by oath—as every American official must be*—to support the Constitution. The New York Sun commented on them in an editorial, “Lost in Egypt,” suggesting she had missed an opportunity to take the discussion of law-giving all the way back to Sinai. But the New York Times’ dispatch opens up the question of how popular an example our Constitution is these days. The Times reporter, Adam Liptak, gained an advance look at a new study on precisely that topic. He quotes its authors, two law professors, as reporting that our Constitution “appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional drafters elsewhere.” Mr. Liptak, in my view, is onto an important story here. One of the key features of these newfangled constitutions with which everyone is so smitten is that they are much longer than America’s parchment. In Canada’s constitution, which our friendly neighbor got around to writing only in 1982, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is, at more than 1,000 words, twice as long as our Bill of Rights, which has 482 words. The curious thing is that with all that verbiage, the Canadians failed to find space to provide for the right that one of our greatest constitutional commentators, St. George Tucker, called the “true palladium** of our liberty”—namely, the right to keep and bear arms. “Why, that’s impossible!” you might exclaim. “No constitution writer could forget such a right.” But feature this. The South African bill of rights is more than ten times the length of ours. And in that vast verbiage there’s not one syllable protecting the right to keep and bear arms. The document covers equality, dignity, life, security of person, slavery, privacy, religion, expression, picketing, association, politics, citizenship, movement, occupation, labor relations, the environment, property, housing, health care, education, language, culture, and arrest, among other rights. But not so much as a peep about the palladium of our liberty. Oh, and South Africa’s constitution states that the whole list of rights can be thrown into a cocked hat if there’s a state of emergency. But never mind, the European Convention on Human Rights appears to be even longer than South Africa’s—running to more than 5,000 words. Yet the Europeans couldn’t find room for the palladium of liberty, either. Mr. Liptak of the Times reports that only 2 percent of the world’s constitutions feature this one of the most basic rights. I cite this right only as an example of the problem with these hyper-long and detailed constitutions. When something is left out of a long list of rights, it tends to look less like an accident—given that they thought to list so much else. If the American constitution is a rich painting done in simple, elegant strokes, the new constitutions à la mode are something out of Breugel, crowded with so many little, crabbed figures one has to hunt for any particular one of them. Finding a right becomes a constitutional version of “Where’s Waldo?” Yet the great attraction to the left in these long constitutions is that they are built less around one of our Founders’ most famous modi operandi , the idea of negative rights or restrictions on the government. These new constitutions are riddled with positive rights, meaning things the government must provide. Our negative rights are worded like this: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” etc., etc. Positive rights are worded like this from the South African Constitution: “Everyone has the right to have access to a) health care services, including reproductive health care; b) sufficient food and water; and c) social security, including, if they are unable to support themselves and their dependants, appropriate social assistance. The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realization of each of these rights.” No wonder a member of President Obama’s brain trust, Cass Sunstein, a law professor at Harvard, has called South Africa’s foundational law “the most admirable constitution in the world.” It’s just what the left is looking for these days, a system under which the government is not only permitted to do what the left wants but, at least in principle, required to do it. This is a feature of the so-called communitarian movement, in which the community outranks the individual. It is just breathtaking to see a paean to it coming from a justice of our own Supreme Court on the airwaves of another country. THIS IS NOT TO SUGGEST that Justice Ginsburg lacks for patriotism. I would not want to do that, even for a nanosecond. Some of the clips of her remarks that are rocketing around the web exclude a number of profound observations by her that are contained in the full interview. One is an essential point about constitutions generally, which is that, as she put it, “a constitution, as important as it is, will mean nothing unless the people are yearning for liberty and freedom. If the people don’t care, then the best constitution in the world won’t make any difference.” She also spoke about the Constitution’s preamble and the intention to form “a more perfect union.” She stressed the enduring nature of that quest. No one suggests that America’s Constitution could not be improved. The Bill of Rights, after all, was itself a series of amendments. All the more admirable our Constitution has become. Editorializing on Justice Ginsburg’s interview, the Sun said it has nothing against South Africa, Canada, Europe, and Australia. America may turn out to be a legal backwater, the Sun said in respect of Justice Kirby of Australia, “but if you want to take away our Constitution, you’ll have to pry it out of our cold, dead hands.”
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‘A Legal Backwater’
The National Organization for Women (NOW) is still trying to get Rush Limbaugh booted from the airwaves. This Daily Caller report highlights the group’s disdain for political speech with which it disagrees: “He is going to be whining and calling us out about his First Amendment rights” Terry O’Neill, president of NOW, told The Daily Caller about how she expects Limbaugh to react to their campaign. “There is nothing in the Constitution that says Rush Limbaugh gets $38 million a year for being on a radio show.” The NOW protest campaign is called ” Enough Rush .” Some people never know when enough is enough.
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Hush Rush NOW
“Hugo Chavez has the constitution of a horse,” said one Venezuelan official medical spokesman. If that’s true, the horse is limping in the paddock. Flying back and forth from Caracas to Havana, Chavez already has had three operations (one exploratory) and accompanying radiation treatments. He’s had two cancerous tumors removed — one reportedly the size of a baseball — from what has been described as “the pelvic area.” He’s not in the shape necessary to wage a vigorous campaign for his presidential reelection scheduled for this October. It would seem the Chavez era is in its final phase. While some would like to tie the disastrous civil security situation of robbery, drug trafficking, murder and kidnapping to Hugo Chavez’s absence from the scene of presidential authority, sources in the K&R (kidnapping and ransom) aspects of international insurance doubt that political connection. To them it’s just business as usual in Venezuela. The Venezuelan law enforcement community dashes from one high profile case to another as diplomats and wealthy businessmen are targeted. The reality is that even when Chavez was healthy, crime in Venezuela was endemic. The so-called “express kidnappings” in the past several years have become a trademark of criminal life in the cities as apparently well-to-do citizens are snatched off the streets. The victims are driven to appropriate bank cash machines and the money thus obtained becomes the instant ransom. Teams of bodyguards follow major businessmen and entertainment personalities everywhere, but it doesn’t stop “the game.” The environment of civil insecurity, however, has become so bad since Chavez’s indisposition that his loyalists now charge his opponents with inflating statistics and manufacturing crime stories in order to aid their own election prospects. Naturally this is denied, but it is obvious that anti-Chavez forces enjoy the timing of any increased breakdown of law and order. The first operation for the removal of Chavez’s tumor was treated as an unfortunate but not atypical health problem for a man of his age. The second operation of a smaller, but still cancerous, tumor carries an entirely different political tone. That there has been a blackout on any discussion of the exact nature of the cancer — other than to say it was in the pelvic region — has only encouraged speculation. Advanced prostate cancer is the current leader of the speculative list. It certainly does not look optimistic for Chavez’s political, or any other, future. Hugo Chavez has several close friends from his Army days on whom he counts for his regime’s political and physical protection. They find themselves in the unenviable position of having to fill in while the boss is hors de combat . Chavez had done an effective job of instructing his back-up team before his first major surgery, but this last time has been less well organized. The problem is that the reelection campaign is full upon Chavez’s supporters. His most trusted lieutenants tend to find overwhelming the handling of those issues as well as running a government beset by waves of criminality in the streets, offices, and homes. Undoubtedly Chavez will do all he can to remain in power and his illness may produce an outpouring of sympathy that will overwhelm the usual partisanship in Venezuelan politics. One can be sure, however, that behind locked doors of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) is a vigorous discussion of how to deal with alternatives arising from President Chavez’s health problem. The need for creating solutions for several scenarios involving recovery, convalescence, continued indisposition, etc. during the period leading up to the election in October is currently a matter of priority consideration, to say the least. Leading the race of opposition figures to replace Hugo Chavez is the youthful and athletic 39-year-old governor of the state of Miranda, Henrique Capriles. While still polling far behind Chavez, Capriles has captured the attention of the entire range of opposition groups and now provides a striking alternative to the ailing and prematurely aging socialist leader. As the months progress, Chavez’s inability to keep up with the “new boy on the block” will become even more apparent. If Chavez should physically falter, his left-wing mantle will be picked up by one of his compadres who have served with him during the past 13 years. One of the leading PSUV candidates is Diosdado Cabello, now minister of Housing and Public Affairs as well as head of the Venezuelan Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL). The latter position provides Cabello with considerable leverage in electioneering. The fact that his brother heads the Venezuelan internal revenue service doesn’t hurt either. Under Chavez Venezuela has become a benefactor to many anti-U.S. elements around the world. Countries from Latin America to Africa have come to count on his very personalized aid programs. Chavez’s departure from active politics will have an international effect, something that Iran and even Russia will find disadvantageous. The die is cast, however. Hugo Chavez is playing out his final act — if not scene.
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Chavez’s Last Stand
As it becomes more and more evident that Mitt Romney will be the Republican presidential nominee, a strange thing is happening; strange as in outlandish, but not surprising. For the past year or so, the liberal media has been panting for his nomination as if they were in his employ. He couldn’t have hired more efficient hit men to belittle his rivals or besmirch their reputations. But, as we have seen many times before, this honeymoon is about to come to an abrupt end when they will turn on him faster than warm mayonnaise. This of course will be explained away by noting that Romney will be “running to the right” in the general election, and will thus be transformed from a smooth and articulate business executive into a numbskulled, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal. And without fail, he will be labeled with the most damning words in the liberal lexicon: incurious and un-nuanced. He will be subjected to various and sundry spelling and geography tests by the same folks who got the vapors over Dan Quayle’s “potatoe,” yet batted nary an eyelash over Barack Obama’s “57 states.” Yes, you can bet that the keyboards of these paragons of journalism will be working overtime reworking their Mitt bios. Which caused me to wonder: what if today’s leading lights of liberal punditry were to describe some our first presidents and apply their poison pens thusly? Come to think of it, the following blurbs can probably already be found right in your children’s history books. George Washington : A Southern aristocrat who was born to the purple yet cloaked himself in the same false humility as his namesakes in the Bush family, he was purported to be so honest as to have confessed to chopping down a cherry tree, and so athletic that he threw a silver dollar across the Potomac River. Yet our sources have revealed that it was his starving slaves who ravaged the tree, while the tossing of currency was an apocryphal example of his noted profligacy. While he was famous for promoting his own extreme religious views, as a general he launched a unilateral and unprovoked sneak attack against German immigrants sold into military service by their greedy princes, on their holiest day of the year. Best Attribute: Was said to be a prolific dancer and an able horseman. Most outrageous quote: “The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.” John Adams : Was primarily known as the author of the Alien and Sedition Acts; the most nefarious legislation the nation had ever known until surpassed by the even more restrictive Patriot Act of 2001. Was admitted to the bar after graduating Harvard, although there is no record of his having published anything in the Law Review. His most famous case was the acquittal of three soldiers who gunned down an unarmed African American community organizer. Was also notable for having appointed John Marshall as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, who, in the famous case, Marbury v. Madison , somehow decided that the Courts should be able to decide the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress. This decision has, of course, subsequently been disclaimed by more qualified Constitutional experts. Best Attribute: Although he was self-admittedly “obnoxious and disliked,” it was nonetheless rumored that most of his pre-presidential decisions were made by his wife. Most outrageous quote: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion… Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.” Thomas Jefferson : Best known as the author of the Declaration of Independence through which he established the separation of Church and State. And although he was a notorious enemy of a strong federal government, he nonetheless expanded U.S. power by seizing nearly one million square miles of land that was rightfully the property of Native Americans, via the so-called Louisiana Purchase. Best Attribute: His record of speaking against slavery while owning hundreds of slaves himself, was greatly mitigated by his marriage to his household slave Sally Hemings, with whom he had six children; subsequently freeing all of them and providing for them in his will. Most outrageous quote: “But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years?” Note: All biographical content is the responsibility of the anonymous authors, although any inaccuracies may well be accounted for on next week’s New York Times Corrections page.
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Past Presidential Punditry
Yeah, he destroyed the U.S. economy, trampled on the Constitution and stoked the flames of class warfare, but he did it with grace and poise. Via The Hill: First lady Michelle Obama said this week that she is “working hard” to help her husband’s re-election campaign “because he’s handled himself with a level of grace
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Mooch: Barack Has Handled First Term With “Grace And Poise”…
