Justice Ginsburg would be horrified at what’s happened since her death. And at the brazen moves that some right-wingers now openly champion, including barring women from voting and outlawing birth control. Everything she fought for is under dire attack.
Justice Ginsburg would be horrified at what’s happened since her death. And at the brazen moves that some right-wingers now openly champion, including barring women from voting and outlawing birth control. Everything she fought for is under dire attack.
RBG never gave up no matter what barrier or tragedy she was confronted with.
Talk about not sleeping. I doubt if she ever slept for 8 hours. If you haven't seen the documentary put out in late 2020 here is the IMDB link with the overview-
I'm glad someone feels like there is still hope. Personally, each notch in the Rethuglican lipstick case is convincing me that they mean business. Their business is not always executed according to the rule of law. Get ready for breeding camps.
Agreed. But I still cannot understand why she didn’t retire in time to preserve her seat for someone who wasn’t a radical theologically driven ideologue.
And if she had? Let’s not forget what happened to Merrick Garland’s nomination, followed by Barrett’s. I’m not sure it would have made any difference. I, too, regretted that she didn’t, but Mitch McConnell is a snake and I suspect he would have held up any nominee to replace her. The Republican playbook has long been to control the judiciary; McConnell saw his chance and grabbed it.
The notion that Trump, of all presidents, was able to nominate three supreme court justices is nauseating.
She did, but that was something like a decade before her death. I imagine she felt like she had unfinished business. And could Obama have mustered 60 votes for any nominee? His last nominee, in 2010, barely reached that threshold.
Wasn’t it Harry Reid (D-NV)that changed the Senate vote count for approval from 60 down to 51? That’s the new standard for SCOTUS candidates as we unfortunately now know.
In retrospect, it's easy to criticize her. I did. More than once. But maybe she didn't think she was really going to die so soon?
Perhaps she was just like most pundits and voters - who thought Hillary was obviously going to win the presidency. Even Trump was shocked that he won. Andy Borowitz reportedly overheard the Orange Menace comment upon his election: "Really? OMG what do I do now?" Soon he was receiving handwritten instructional notes (which he had read to him) from various titans of industry, Russian FSB agents and not a few bible pounders.
She stated her reasons publicly by asking how many people thought the Senate would confirm a nomination of someone like her. Of course, anyone paying attention knew that McConnell’s Senate would not have confirmed any Obama nomination to replace her.
The treatments given RBG were far more advanced than what was available to my mother-in-law. RBG actually lived with the disease for some time. RBG was human and human beings can't be perfect 100 percent of the time. She did what she considered best.
My wife died of pancreatic cancer in 2020. She was very active, 3 mile walk every morning, only sporadic abdominal pains, which both of us thought were gas. Then the pain become intolerable, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and died about 3 weeks thereafter. It's an insidious disease and can sneak up on you. Of course I don't know how it presented in RBG's case.
Didn’t Obama try to convince her to retire during his term, which I recall offended her. I have a hard time forgiving her for that. She was old and ill. She should have seen that. I admire the work she did earlier, but I think not retiring was a real smudge on her record, and has led to a lot of what she fought for being rolled back. A lesson to us all - women are not immune from the seduction of power.
I’ve read that too. Given RBG’s history, I suspect it wasn’t power that seduced her, but rather the lovely ideal that the first woman president would name her replacement. That would have been so fitting.
Meanwhile, back here in the real world, there are real consequences to her inaction and miscalculation on that one. To be fair, most of us miscalculated that one. But for the future, I feel obligated to point out this missed opportunity whenever someone is rhapsodizing about RBG - I’m not sure I will ever be able to forgive her.
Sorry, but I think the point is that it shouldn't matter which president appoints which justice. All judges are supposed to put aside personal opinions and biases in favor of the constitution.
Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch lied about adherence to stare decisis during their confirmation hearings; that's on congress. Those three never should have been confirmed no matter who or what McConnell put onto the floor. They should be sanctioned at the very least.
Thomas, Alito, and Roberts are corrupt, as reported by various journalists over the last two years. SCOTUS needs enforceable ethics rules to prevent rulings for sale.
SCOTUS also needs term limits or a set retirement age, either of which would have eliminated the inconvenient timing of RBG's passing.
All we can do about it now is to vote in a blue majority congress to put these needed guardrails in place. Personally I'd like to see Thomas required to fork over a fine equivalent to the value of all his trips and campers, not to mention Mama's house. The fine could be designated to be split among all the people held for more bail than they could afford. If it were up to me, I'd put Alito in stocks on the steps of the Supreme Court for a week. Let's see how much he loves 17th century jurisprudence then. We broke away from England to create a better system, not use the inferior old one to justify injustice! And Roberts... demote him to plain old Justice, and dock his pay for the rest of his time on the bench for not doing his job and because his wife makes a handsome living by peddling his influence. Maybe I should be appointed to replace Roberts as Chief?
George, I’m thinking that she realized that as long as Mitch McConnell was in charge, her successor would wait until there was a Republican in the White House. I’m sure that if she’d retired in 2013, McConnell would have found an excuse to not bring up a successor for a vote. She worked hard to stay in shape for a Democratic president with a majority in the Senate; but pancreatic cancer took her quickly.
I’ve commented on this, too. I think she resisted making a decision that was open politicization of the court, but I think she could have made a philosophical decision. Still, could she have KNOWN how skewed the R party would be willing to go? She trusted our bedrock system, but they’ve fractured that.
RBG may have hoped that she could do one more thing, fight one more fight. Alas, though she overcame numerous health challenges, her last stand was too short.
George, thank you! You are exactly right. She basically shot herself and her lifetime of work in the foot. She had Obama and a Democratic Congress in place and should have retired. This, unfortunately, mars her incredible legacy. She was human, afterall.
I have not read any accounts of why she decided to stay on the Court and certainly should have seen the right wing storm clouds forming.
A person can spend decades building a wonderful structure, but it only takes one day for a criminal with a gas can and a torch to burn it down.
Yes, totally with you, George. President Obama politely asked Justice Ginsburg twice if she would please retire, to care for herself better and also to make way for an appropriate replacement of his choosing. I have never quite understood her reasoning not to do so. If she had, maybe this country wouldn't be in the mess it's in right now. We'll never know.
McConnell had 9 months to appoint Garland as a judge, but said it wasn't enough time. A month before an election seems to be plenty of time for him, though.
Ruth Bader attended East Midwood Jewish Center. In 1946, in the shadow of the Holocaust, the 13 year old Bader had an essay, titled One People, published in the synagogue bulletin. She wrote:
We must never forget the horrors which our brethren were subjected to in Bergen-Belsen and other Nazi concentration camps. Then, too, we must try hard to understand that for righteous people hate and prejudice are neither good occupations nor fit companions . . . We cannot feel safer until every nation, regardless of weapons or power, will meet together in good faith, the people worthy of mutual association. There can be a happy world and there will be once again, when men create a strong bond towards one another, a bond unbreakable by a studied prejudice or a passing circumstance." (The full essay is copied below.)
"East Midwood Jewish Center’s task today, as it was in 1924, is to transmit to new generations and the public at large the relevance and beauty of our religious traditions, and the Jewish emphasis on education, social justice, and our mutual responsibilities to each other."
The rabbi at EMJC was Harry Halpern. "At the EMJC, his sermons constantly educated, challenged and inspired the congregation both in terms of Jewish identity and larger social concerns such as the rights of minorities, and he "pleaded for intensive Jewish Education of the Day School-Yeshiva type long before private schools became fashionable. . . . He opposed the use of taxes to support private schools (including religious schools) during his chairmanship of the Social Actions Commission of Conservative Judaism, also speaking out against the idea as President of the New York Board of Rabbis. The Board of Rabbis resolution was especially opposed to the idea of public funding of private religious schools, calling such action a "violation of our understanding of the hallowed principle of church-state separation." He also supported "Rabbi Morris Adler of Detroit, Michigan, who took a strong stand against "any religious intrusions upon public education," Halpern personally supported this position, adding that it was a "long-established policy" of the organization. Halpern continued his opposition to religion in public schools through the 1960s, publicly supporting the Supreme Court ban on prayer in public schools." Halpern received his bachelor's degree in philosophy from the City College of New York in 1919 and a master's degree from Columbia University in 1925. He also received both a bachelor and doctoral degree from Brooklyn Law School, studied at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, and earned ordination as a rabbi from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS), in 1929. He later received a Doctor of Hebrew Literature degree from JTS in 1951." It was a time when even Jewish men with advanced degrees were discriminated against in many professions, including the law. Many such men chose to serve as rabbis. (For a time during the depression my widowed grandmother, who had a small dress shop in which she was the only staff, helped support the families of her three brothers - one had a law degree, one a PhD in education, and the third a union leader and organizer who'd been murdered by the bosses.)
In the 1950s EMJC did open a Hebrew day school. In 2019, EMJC rented the school building to Urban Dove, "which had outgrown its space in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The Urban Dove Team Charter School, serves students who have struggled academically in high school. Many of them are black or Hispanic."
I grew up at EMJC in the 1950s-60s. During Rabbi Halpern's long tenure. Eventually attending Hebrew school 4 afternoons, Sabbath services Friday night and Saturday, Sunday school, and Sunday afternoon youth activities, including woodworking. (In my public school only boys could take wood shop. Girls had to take cooking, sewing, and hat making.)
Ruth Bader's full essay.
One People
The war has left a bloody trail and many deep wounds not too easily healed. Many people have been left with scars that take a long time to pass away. We must never forget the horrors which our brethren were subjected to in Bergen-Belsen and other Nazi concentration camps. Then, too, we must try hard to understand that for righteous people hate and prejudice are neither good occupations nor fit companions. Rabbi Alfred Bettleheim once said: “Prejudice saves us a painful trouble, the trouble of thinking.” In our beloved land families were not scattered, communities not erased nor our nation destroyed by the ravages of the World War.
Yet, dare we be at ease? We are part of a world whose unity has been almost completely shattered. No one can feel free from danger and destruction until the many torn threads of civilization are bound together again. We cannot feel safer until every nation, regardless of weapons or power, will meet together in good faith, the people worthy of mutual association.
There can be a happy world and there will be once again, when men create a strong bond towards one another, a bond unbreakable by a studied prejudice or a passing circumstance. Then and only then shall we have a world built on the foundation of the Fatherhood of God and whose structure is the Brotherhood of Man.
Lin- thank you for sharing RBG’s essay. I learned about the Holocaust at age 11, when my teacher gave me an assignment to write an essay on “The Holocaust: Could it Happen Again?” I asked my mother to explain that word and she just said “I’ll take you to the library.”
She dropped me off at the Cleveland Public Library, an enormous building I had never visited. The librarian pointed me to the card catalog room and I eventually found a little alcove where those books were stored.
It’s been 60 years but I can still remember the sun slanting through high windows, lighting up the dust (like ashes?) as I read through page after page of the horrors.
My mother picked me up at closing time and I asked “could something like this really happen??!” Her response, which I will never forget: “Some people think so.”
I don’t remember my essay, except that of course I said it could not possibly happen again. It was not as wise as RBG’s essay, and of course it has happened again and again. Different countries, different victims, but the horror was not banished as I believed - and RBG hoped.
What I read that day in the CPL - the first person accounts, the witnesses - has never left me. I wish I could believe “Never again!” But I cannot.
As a result of being a military dependent toddler in Germany during the Nuremberg trials and Berlin Airlift, I remember my parents, especially my mother, balancing the better history and friendliness of the German people with the popular ugliness they could fall into at least temporary support of leaders like Adolph Hitler. She reminded us he was more popular in Germany than FDR was in America. In fact Hitler seemed more popular with many repugnant Americans that supported the America First movement right up to Pearl Harbor.
Our families were long time Republicans (from the very founders on my wife's side, but were friends with and supporters of many Democrats (like Harold L. Ickes who had been a Republican).
The Berlin Airlift went a long ways toward making so many more Germans such better allies and partners in Democracies.
For the bigger story of all the logistics and aircraft maintenance challenges, see "The Air Force Can Deliver Anything! A History of the Berlin Airlift" which is available as a paperback at Amazon or a downloadable PDF at:
ThankYou. Your comment is such a profound personal insight and historical narrative.
You don't mention the year. In the late 1950s and early 60s the Holocaust was never mentioned in my Hebrew school classes and my public school history classes just about made it through WW I.
It was not spoken of at home. Relatives and neighbors with numbers on their arms were the least likely to say anything. As my mother and I were long time regulars at the public library, as a child I had permission to wander the adult stacks - ostensibly to fetch books for my mother, but in fact to explore. I came across one small paperback about the Holocaust. I never mentioned that I'd read it.
In my junior high (1970s), one of the teachers in the school was a holocaust survivor. She came to our history classes and spoke to us. I cannot imagine what that was like for her. We saw several films, very graphic, about the concentration camps. I can remember students vomiting. It was good that we were shown this, and that our teacher made it personal. Today? Perhaps it would be concluded that such history made students too uncomfortable so it shouldn’t be taught. We *were* uncomfortable. We *should* have been uncomfortable and also outraged, and determined that it should never happen again. We should have learned about slavery in the exact same way.
I believe it was 1962 or 1963. I never - before or after that time - heard the word Holocaust again in my classrooms or at home. It’s stunning how little modern history was ever mentioned in school. Unlike you, I am not Jewish and have/had Jewish relatives. But I have been a fervent supporter of Israel ever since and have done considerable volunteer work resettling refugees from the various and endless wars. Including sharing my home with refugees from the Balkan wars and now from Ukraine. I want so badly to make a pilgrimage to Auschwitz, though that boat has probably sailed due to arthritis limiting my mobility. ❤️
As they say "You don't have to be Jewish..." I visited the Jewish Museum in Eisenstadt, Austria. It was run by a young Austrian with, I think, a degree in theology and Ancient Near Eastern Languages. If I recall, he thought it would be a short gig until he got an academic appointment in his field. But he fell in love with the museum and community of visitors. It is a lovely museum with fine and well cared for collections and many outreach programs, especially for families and children. It is in what was the historic ghetto. A few houses away is the Landesmuseum Burgenland which provides a comprehensive understanding of the region's history and its evolution over time. Which interestingly elides any evidence of a Jewish presence. Except on the doorframes where you can see that mezuzahs have been gouged out of the stone. Both museums are in buildings originally owned by Jews. Now in a sense, Jews are still ghettoized in Eisenstadt. (Almost the entire Jewish population was eliminated during the war.)
I experienced an overt antisemitism in Vienna and Eisenstadt, which I never experienced in Berlin, Munich, or Dresden.)
Having immersed myself in the literature from the time I was 10 until college, I have never felt a need to take a course in the subject or visit the camps. The best books I've read are Aharon Appelfeld's Badenheim 1939, The Retreat, and Tzili. Although Appelfeld escaped a forced labor camp as a child, his books never take you into the camps. But focus on peoples' response to society shutting down and shutting them out.
I think the US Holocaust Museum is well-done and wished every public school could finance class visits to Washington DC for civic and world history education. Done at the right age, with the right adult leaders, it could really make a difference in students’ lives.
I think we were there through late 1947 to late 1950 since we were there through the 48/49 Berlin Airlift and the 1950 Oberammergau Play (beautiful to many but, as my mother described it, possibly the most anti-Semitic it had ever been after Hitler's suggested changes for the 300th anniversary in 1934).
I was told the early Holocaust survivors that came to the US found few who wanted to listen to such dreadful stories, instead concentrating on the better things in life.
I saw the same in Cambodian professionals like a Doctor that worked as a helper in our Community College Aeronautics tool room. He like most others wouldn't tell his own children of the horrors their family faced.
It took a long time for survivors to be able to have those who hadn't experienced it really listen here in this country. In a way not discussing it until later years may have helped give time for the German public to sort out their future consideration for Jews. I was a bit surprised to find that Germany seems to have welcomed a higher percentage of returning Jews than other countries.
I had to look that up to believe it might be true. I was inspired to do so from watching the 2023 "Oppenheimer" movie and finding that the leading University for Physics was the Georg August University of Göttingen dramatically changed by the Great Purge of 1933. According to Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_G%C3%B6ttingen#
"...in the 1930s, the university became a focal point for the Nazi crackdown on "Jewish physics", as represented by the work of Albert Einstein. In what was later called the "great purge" of 1933, academics including Max Born, Victor Goldschmidt, James Franck, Eugene Wigner, Leó Szilárd, Edward Teller, Edmund Landau, Emmy Noether, and Richard Courant were expelled or fled. Most of them fled Nazi Germany for places like the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Following the great purge, in 1934 David Hilbert, by then a symbol of German mathematics, was dining with Bernhard Rust, the Nazi minister of education. Rust asked, "How is mathematics at Göttingen, now that it is free from the Jewish influence?" Hilbert replied, "There is no mathematics in Göttingen anymore."
For better or worse we got the best of German Physicists while they eliminated almost all of theirs. Maybe they appreciate them so much more now.
In 1950, playwright Arthur Miller and composer Leonard Bernstein led a petition to cancel the passion play. However, the townspeople defiantly restaged the 1934 play.
In the 1960s, Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, Paul Celan, and other prominent intellectuals called for a boycott due to the play's antisemitism. After Vatican II's attempted reforms (attempted because not accepted by many including in the American Council of Bishops, and such as Opus Dei - bedfellows Mel Gibson and Leonard Leo) even the Catholic Church asked for changes. Not much luck. It is a traveling show. When I lived in Carlinville Illinois (the cornfield 5 hours south of Chicago where Cary Grant got strafed in North by Northwest) public school children were taken to performances. The head of Blackburn College's psychology department had the license plate SS1934. Her husband who had been in that position had killed himself in full Nazi regalia. Each year she took his ashes to Bayreuth to visit with other fans of Hitler. Later Carlinville was named one of the best 100 small towns in America. Yikes!
What I remember was my mother using it as an example of outward appearances, pleasing to the eye, hiding the poisoned hearts and minds. She also thought we (as a people), could be as blind and likely to suffer a similar poisoning because we really weren't that different. It was already there in Germany as far as the Passion Play, but Hitler wanted to use it on steroids so much that he forced so many of the most capable people out of Germany and tried to kill more than the 2/3rds that he did.
Too many in the US were antisemitic but not that antisemitic and some like Harold L. Ickes (a good friend of my wife's grandfather), wanted to help by making it possible for much higher numbers of Jewish refugees to be able to be accepted in the then territory of Alaska as described at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slattery_Report
I believe Ickes pressed for the most he thought possible, but it was not supported by many others, or even FDR who wanted a limit of 10,000 or 10% of refugees allowed into the US. The opposition he ran into, even for limits he thought possible, is one of the more disappointing revelations of our history to me personally.
Justice Ginsberg, also said if you believe in something you must continue to fight for it . Like Hillary said , Justice Ginsberg pave the way for women. We must continue her ledgecy by not given up. Sure we have been pushed back, but doesn't mean we can't do nothing about it. There are thousands of women in this country that are angry and frustrated about Roe v. Wade and civil rights that are going to the polls to vote and let their voices be heard not only for their reproductive rights but for our Democracy. We have a tough fight ahead but I know we will win.
Michael Bales: Remember how Ruth Bader Ginsburg exclaimed that, if Trump were elected, she would emigrate to Canada.
RBG was criticized for saying that.
I -- and I believe you would agree -- thought her fear was perfectly reasonable.
My homeland is in the Rhineland. If I were single, I would move to the Rhineland. Oh, the friendships that are like first-cousins! I love those people. (Realistic, I am bilingual.)
I, for one, heartily seconded RBG: EMIGRATE.
One of my FAVORITE authors is Irmgard Keun ("Gilgi -- Eine von Uns", "das kunstseidene Mädchen," "Nach Mitternacht"). She emigrated from the Third Reich in 1936; Joseph Roth, her lover (and great author) wondered: "What took you so long?" She had fled to Oostende in Flanders.
Which created a problem in 1940, with the Third Reich overtaking the Low Countries. Irmgard Keun FAKED HER OWN DEATH: Even the London Times publicized that Irmgard Keun had taken her own life. But she slid her way back home in Köln (Cologne).
Irmgard Keun managed to stay hidden in plain sight.
Any time: Someone could have denounced her to the Gestapo.
She was cute and pretty, so that may have factored into people liking her around and not denouncing her.
But the Nazis had burnt and forbidden her work, so Irmgard Keun could not afford to be denounced.
From my Walloon (Belgian) Mom, I learned similar and even worse stories during the Third Reich.
No, at the time, from this background, I though RBG in 2016 was quite right: Trump elected: EMIGRATE.
Needless to say, we already have many strong and wise heroes who have been stepping up. I'm remembering that speech by Tom Joad in "The Grapes of Wrath:"Then I'll be all aroun' in the dark. I'll be everywhere — wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there." Good people wont stop.
I agree and I am disgusted at how the spirit and legal insights of Ruth Bader Ginzburg has died with her. Just because the floppy brained McConnell cynically replaced her with a Catholic Zealot should not have interred her works with her bones.
She herself should be the basis for a volcano of protest.
After all Heather emphasizes:
Ginsburg often quoted Justice Louis Brandeis’s famous line, “The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people,” and she advised people to “fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
Yet solitary figure against injustice she fades into the mists.
She was a fighter. I think she'd have saddled up and gone to war for the law she really wanted enshrined and never have resigned herself to accept second class status. I wish we could take abortion out of the equation and fight for equal rights for women across all facets of society - equal pay, equal autonomy, equal opportunity. Unfortunately I think the clump of cells infant is just a poster child for a much deeper misogyny. After all, NC may elect a governor who wants to take away women's suffrage.
Thank you, Sys. I started to watch it and realized I had seen it before. I agree that hope is not a utopian drug but a realistic stance. Obama kindled it. A lot of what's going on now is backlash to his only partial whiteness. I'm not even sure it's racism, but maybe atavistic fear of the other? Pragmatically speaking, though, the cause is less important than the remedy, and Ms. Clayton is a perfect standard bearer. So are Justin Pearson and Maxwell Frost. I actually think Biden is a beacon of hope, because he's evidence that age doesn't equate to antiquated thinking or mental incapacity. There are lots of people who carry the ideals of equality and opportunity - from Katie Hobbs to Pete Buttgieg to Jamie Raskin. Live on hope and get out the vote.
Justice Ginsburg would be horrified at what’s happened since her death. And at the brazen moves that some right-wingers now openly champion, including barring women from voting and outlawing birth control. Everything she fought for is under dire attack.
Horrified but neither surprised nor demoralized.
Yes. That warms my heart. What a hero.
RBG never gave up no matter what barrier or tragedy she was confronted with.
Talk about not sleeping. I doubt if she ever slept for 8 hours. If you haven't seen the documentary put out in late 2020 here is the IMDB link with the overview-
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13387834/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3_tt_4_nm_4_q_ruth%2520bader
Thank you, Gary!
I'm glad someone feels like there is still hope. Personally, each notch in the Rethuglican lipstick case is convincing me that they mean business. Their business is not always executed according to the rule of law. Get ready for breeding camps.
If surprised, it would be because of when she died—could not live past the election
Agreed. But I still cannot understand why she didn’t retire in time to preserve her seat for someone who wasn’t a radical theologically driven ideologue.
And if she had? Let’s not forget what happened to Merrick Garland’s nomination, followed by Barrett’s. I’m not sure it would have made any difference. I, too, regretted that she didn’t, but Mitch McConnell is a snake and I suspect he would have held up any nominee to replace her. The Republican playbook has long been to control the judiciary; McConnell saw his chance and grabbed it.
The notion that Trump, of all presidents, was able to nominate three supreme court justices is nauseating.
KR, she had Obama in place with a Democratic majority during his 1st term. Bad timing on RBG’s part.
She did, but that was something like a decade before her death. I imagine she felt like she had unfinished business. And could Obama have mustered 60 votes for any nominee? His last nominee, in 2010, barely reached that threshold.
Wasn’t it Harry Reid (D-NV)that changed the Senate vote count for approval from 60 down to 51? That’s the new standard for SCOTUS candidates as we unfortunately now know.
I think Reid changed it for federal judges other than SCOTUS. McConnell is the one that changed the SCOTUS threshold.
Yes, that happened in 2017.
That’s simply wrong. Ginsberg could have resigned while Dems still had the Senate.
In retrospect, it's easy to criticize her. I did. More than once. But maybe she didn't think she was really going to die so soon?
Perhaps she was just like most pundits and voters - who thought Hillary was obviously going to win the presidency. Even Trump was shocked that he won. Andy Borowitz reportedly overheard the Orange Menace comment upon his election: "Really? OMG what do I do now?" Soon he was receiving handwritten instructional notes (which he had read to him) from various titans of industry, Russian FSB agents and not a few bible pounders.
She had pancreatic cancer. Death is swift and painful. She had to have known.
Knowing and accepting are two very different things. I still mourn her loss too much to criticize.
I would love to know Obama’s conversation with her about retiring, and her reasons for staying on.
She stated her reasons publicly by asking how many people thought the Senate would confirm a nomination of someone like her. Of course, anyone paying attention knew that McConnell’s Senate would not have confirmed any Obama nomination to replace her.
The treatments given RBG were far more advanced than what was available to my mother-in-law. RBG actually lived with the disease for some time. RBG was human and human beings can't be perfect 100 percent of the time. She did what she considered best.
My wife died of pancreatic cancer in 2020. She was very active, 3 mile walk every morning, only sporadic abdominal pains, which both of us thought were gas. Then the pain become intolerable, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and died about 3 weeks thereafter. It's an insidious disease and can sneak up on you. Of course I don't know how it presented in RBG's case.
She wanted Hillary to choose the next judge.
I did, too.
Didn’t Obama try to convince her to retire during his term, which I recall offended her. I have a hard time forgiving her for that. She was old and ill. She should have seen that. I admire the work she did earlier, but I think not retiring was a real smudge on her record, and has led to a lot of what she fought for being rolled back. A lesson to us all - women are not immune from the seduction of power.
I’ve read that too. Given RBG’s history, I suspect it wasn’t power that seduced her, but rather the lovely ideal that the first woman president would name her replacement. That would have been so fitting.
Meanwhile, back here in the real world, there are real consequences to her inaction and miscalculation on that one. To be fair, most of us miscalculated that one. But for the future, I feel obligated to point out this missed opportunity whenever someone is rhapsodizing about RBG - I’m not sure I will ever be able to forgive her.
Sorry, but I think the point is that it shouldn't matter which president appoints which justice. All judges are supposed to put aside personal opinions and biases in favor of the constitution.
Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch lied about adherence to stare decisis during their confirmation hearings; that's on congress. Those three never should have been confirmed no matter who or what McConnell put onto the floor. They should be sanctioned at the very least.
Thomas, Alito, and Roberts are corrupt, as reported by various journalists over the last two years. SCOTUS needs enforceable ethics rules to prevent rulings for sale.
SCOTUS also needs term limits or a set retirement age, either of which would have eliminated the inconvenient timing of RBG's passing.
All we can do about it now is to vote in a blue majority congress to put these needed guardrails in place. Personally I'd like to see Thomas required to fork over a fine equivalent to the value of all his trips and campers, not to mention Mama's house. The fine could be designated to be split among all the people held for more bail than they could afford. If it were up to me, I'd put Alito in stocks on the steps of the Supreme Court for a week. Let's see how much he loves 17th century jurisprudence then. We broke away from England to create a better system, not use the inferior old one to justify injustice! And Roberts... demote him to plain old Justice, and dock his pay for the rest of his time on the bench for not doing his job and because his wife makes a handsome living by peddling his influence. Maybe I should be appointed to replace Roberts as Chief?
Yes, term limits, set retirement age or rotating SC judges.
Well said
George, I’m thinking that she realized that as long as Mitch McConnell was in charge, her successor would wait until there was a Republican in the White House. I’m sure that if she’d retired in 2013, McConnell would have found an excuse to not bring up a successor for a vote. She worked hard to stay in shape for a Democratic president with a majority in the Senate; but pancreatic cancer took her quickly.
I’ve commented on this, too. I think she resisted making a decision that was open politicization of the court, but I think she could have made a philosophical decision. Still, could she have KNOWN how skewed the R party would be willing to go? She trusted our bedrock system, but they’ve fractured that.
I agree. It was selfish.
Because, Geoorge, she never gave up! Would that we had/have more like her! On the court and in the USA!
RBG may have hoped that she could do one more thing, fight one more fight. Alas, though she overcame numerous health challenges, her last stand was too short.
Your feelings are shared by many, George.
George, thank you! You are exactly right. She basically shot herself and her lifetime of work in the foot. She had Obama and a Democratic Congress in place and should have retired. This, unfortunately, mars her incredible legacy. She was human, afterall.
I have not read any accounts of why she decided to stay on the Court and certainly should have seen the right wing storm clouds forming.
A person can spend decades building a wonderful structure, but it only takes one day for a criminal with a gas can and a torch to burn it down.
Yes, totally with you, George. President Obama politely asked Justice Ginsburg twice if she would please retire, to care for herself better and also to make way for an appropriate replacement of his choosing. I have never quite understood her reasoning not to do so. If she had, maybe this country wouldn't be in the mess it's in right now. We'll never know.
McConnell had 9 months to appoint Garland as a judge, but said it wasn't enough time. A month before an election seems to be plenty of time for him, though.
1000% right.
My musical tribute tp Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the front steps of the Connecticut State Supreme Court: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E47u3ZEMxYE
Bill Katz - "My musical tribute tp Ruth Bader Ginsburg..."
Beautiful!
That was great Bill!
Bill, that was great!
That was fabulous, brought tears to my eyes!
A truly charming gesture, Bill.
Impressive!
That us great, Bill. Thanks! ♥️
Beautiful tribute to Ruth. Thank you for sharing.
Ruth Bader attended East Midwood Jewish Center. In 1946, in the shadow of the Holocaust, the 13 year old Bader had an essay, titled One People, published in the synagogue bulletin. She wrote:
We must never forget the horrors which our brethren were subjected to in Bergen-Belsen and other Nazi concentration camps. Then, too, we must try hard to understand that for righteous people hate and prejudice are neither good occupations nor fit companions . . . We cannot feel safer until every nation, regardless of weapons or power, will meet together in good faith, the people worthy of mutual association. There can be a happy world and there will be once again, when men create a strong bond towards one another, a bond unbreakable by a studied prejudice or a passing circumstance." (The full essay is copied below.)
"East Midwood Jewish Center’s task today, as it was in 1924, is to transmit to new generations and the public at large the relevance and beauty of our religious traditions, and the Jewish emphasis on education, social justice, and our mutual responsibilities to each other."
The rabbi at EMJC was Harry Halpern. "At the EMJC, his sermons constantly educated, challenged and inspired the congregation both in terms of Jewish identity and larger social concerns such as the rights of minorities, and he "pleaded for intensive Jewish Education of the Day School-Yeshiva type long before private schools became fashionable. . . . He opposed the use of taxes to support private schools (including religious schools) during his chairmanship of the Social Actions Commission of Conservative Judaism, also speaking out against the idea as President of the New York Board of Rabbis. The Board of Rabbis resolution was especially opposed to the idea of public funding of private religious schools, calling such action a "violation of our understanding of the hallowed principle of church-state separation." He also supported "Rabbi Morris Adler of Detroit, Michigan, who took a strong stand against "any religious intrusions upon public education," Halpern personally supported this position, adding that it was a "long-established policy" of the organization. Halpern continued his opposition to religion in public schools through the 1960s, publicly supporting the Supreme Court ban on prayer in public schools." Halpern received his bachelor's degree in philosophy from the City College of New York in 1919 and a master's degree from Columbia University in 1925. He also received both a bachelor and doctoral degree from Brooklyn Law School, studied at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, and earned ordination as a rabbi from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS), in 1929. He later received a Doctor of Hebrew Literature degree from JTS in 1951." It was a time when even Jewish men with advanced degrees were discriminated against in many professions, including the law. Many such men chose to serve as rabbis. (For a time during the depression my widowed grandmother, who had a small dress shop in which she was the only staff, helped support the families of her three brothers - one had a law degree, one a PhD in education, and the third a union leader and organizer who'd been murdered by the bosses.)
In the 1950s EMJC did open a Hebrew day school. In 2019, EMJC rented the school building to Urban Dove, "which had outgrown its space in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The Urban Dove Team Charter School, serves students who have struggled academically in high school. Many of them are black or Hispanic."
I grew up at EMJC in the 1950s-60s. During Rabbi Halpern's long tenure. Eventually attending Hebrew school 4 afternoons, Sabbath services Friday night and Saturday, Sunday school, and Sunday afternoon youth activities, including woodworking. (In my public school only boys could take wood shop. Girls had to take cooking, sewing, and hat making.)
Ruth Bader's full essay.
One People
The war has left a bloody trail and many deep wounds not too easily healed. Many people have been left with scars that take a long time to pass away. We must never forget the horrors which our brethren were subjected to in Bergen-Belsen and other Nazi concentration camps. Then, too, we must try hard to understand that for righteous people hate and prejudice are neither good occupations nor fit companions. Rabbi Alfred Bettleheim once said: “Prejudice saves us a painful trouble, the trouble of thinking.” In our beloved land families were not scattered, communities not erased nor our nation destroyed by the ravages of the World War.
Yet, dare we be at ease? We are part of a world whose unity has been almost completely shattered. No one can feel free from danger and destruction until the many torn threads of civilization are bound together again. We cannot feel safer until every nation, regardless of weapons or power, will meet together in good faith, the people worthy of mutual association.
There can be a happy world and there will be once again, when men create a strong bond towards one another, a bond unbreakable by a studied prejudice or a passing circumstance. Then and only then shall we have a world built on the foundation of the Fatherhood of God and whose structure is the Brotherhood of Man.
http://www.emjc.org/13-year-old-ruth-bader-ginsburgs-essay-1946-emjc-bulletin/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Halpern
Lin- thank you for sharing RBG’s essay. I learned about the Holocaust at age 11, when my teacher gave me an assignment to write an essay on “The Holocaust: Could it Happen Again?” I asked my mother to explain that word and she just said “I’ll take you to the library.”
She dropped me off at the Cleveland Public Library, an enormous building I had never visited. The librarian pointed me to the card catalog room and I eventually found a little alcove where those books were stored.
It’s been 60 years but I can still remember the sun slanting through high windows, lighting up the dust (like ashes?) as I read through page after page of the horrors.
My mother picked me up at closing time and I asked “could something like this really happen??!” Her response, which I will never forget: “Some people think so.”
I don’t remember my essay, except that of course I said it could not possibly happen again. It was not as wise as RBG’s essay, and of course it has happened again and again. Different countries, different victims, but the horror was not banished as I believed - and RBG hoped.
What I read that day in the CPL - the first person accounts, the witnesses - has never left me. I wish I could believe “Never again!” But I cannot.
As a result of being a military dependent toddler in Germany during the Nuremberg trials and Berlin Airlift, I remember my parents, especially my mother, balancing the better history and friendliness of the German people with the popular ugliness they could fall into at least temporary support of leaders like Adolph Hitler. She reminded us he was more popular in Germany than FDR was in America. In fact Hitler seemed more popular with many repugnant Americans that supported the America First movement right up to Pearl Harbor.
Our families were long time Republicans (from the very founders on my wife's side, but were friends with and supporters of many Democrats (like Harold L. Ickes who had been a Republican).
The Berlin Airlift went a long ways toward making so many more Germans such better allies and partners in Democracies.
...and isn't it interesting regarding the handkerchief candy drops during the Berlin Airlift. If you're not familiar, here's a Smithsonian article about it. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/sweet-story-berlin-candy-bomber-180965156/
A friend, John Durant knew him. John was interviewed back in 2018 when he was 91 years old and can be heard at:
https://www.hometownheroesradio.com/mp3/DURANTPOD.mp3
The interview (above) provides more interesting background and extra details than the story at:
https://www.hometownheroesradio.com/berlin-airlift-70-years-later/
For the bigger story of all the logistics and aircraft maintenance challenges, see "The Air Force Can Deliver Anything! A History of the Berlin Airlift" which is available as a paperback at Amazon or a downloadable PDF at:
https://media.defense.gov/2018/Jan/24/2001869016/-1/-1/1/The%20Air%20Force%20Can%20Deliver%20Anything%20a%20History%20of%20the%20Berlin%20Airlift.PDF
We were in the areas at the same time but didn't get to compare notes until 2001 or so.
ThankYou. Your comment is such a profound personal insight and historical narrative.
You don't mention the year. In the late 1950s and early 60s the Holocaust was never mentioned in my Hebrew school classes and my public school history classes just about made it through WW I.
It was not spoken of at home. Relatives and neighbors with numbers on their arms were the least likely to say anything. As my mother and I were long time regulars at the public library, as a child I had permission to wander the adult stacks - ostensibly to fetch books for my mother, but in fact to explore. I came across one small paperback about the Holocaust. I never mentioned that I'd read it.
In my junior high (1970s), one of the teachers in the school was a holocaust survivor. She came to our history classes and spoke to us. I cannot imagine what that was like for her. We saw several films, very graphic, about the concentration camps. I can remember students vomiting. It was good that we were shown this, and that our teacher made it personal. Today? Perhaps it would be concluded that such history made students too uncomfortable so it shouldn’t be taught. We *were* uncomfortable. We *should* have been uncomfortable and also outraged, and determined that it should never happen again. We should have learned about slavery in the exact same way.
I believe it was 1962 or 1963. I never - before or after that time - heard the word Holocaust again in my classrooms or at home. It’s stunning how little modern history was ever mentioned in school. Unlike you, I am not Jewish and have/had Jewish relatives. But I have been a fervent supporter of Israel ever since and have done considerable volunteer work resettling refugees from the various and endless wars. Including sharing my home with refugees from the Balkan wars and now from Ukraine. I want so badly to make a pilgrimage to Auschwitz, though that boat has probably sailed due to arthritis limiting my mobility. ❤️
As they say "You don't have to be Jewish..." I visited the Jewish Museum in Eisenstadt, Austria. It was run by a young Austrian with, I think, a degree in theology and Ancient Near Eastern Languages. If I recall, he thought it would be a short gig until he got an academic appointment in his field. But he fell in love with the museum and community of visitors. It is a lovely museum with fine and well cared for collections and many outreach programs, especially for families and children. It is in what was the historic ghetto. A few houses away is the Landesmuseum Burgenland which provides a comprehensive understanding of the region's history and its evolution over time. Which interestingly elides any evidence of a Jewish presence. Except on the doorframes where you can see that mezuzahs have been gouged out of the stone. Both museums are in buildings originally owned by Jews. Now in a sense, Jews are still ghettoized in Eisenstadt. (Almost the entire Jewish population was eliminated during the war.)
I experienced an overt antisemitism in Vienna and Eisenstadt, which I never experienced in Berlin, Munich, or Dresden.)
Having immersed myself in the literature from the time I was 10 until college, I have never felt a need to take a course in the subject or visit the camps. The best books I've read are Aharon Appelfeld's Badenheim 1939, The Retreat, and Tzili. Although Appelfeld escaped a forced labor camp as a child, his books never take you into the camps. But focus on peoples' response to society shutting down and shutting them out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aharon_Appelfeld
https://jguideeurope.org/en/region/austria/eisenstadt/
https://whichmuseum.com/museum/landesmuseum-burgenland-eisenstadt-26397
I think the US Holocaust Museum is well-done and wished every public school could finance class visits to Washington DC for civic and world history education. Done at the right age, with the right adult leaders, it could really make a difference in students’ lives.
I think we were there through late 1947 to late 1950 since we were there through the 48/49 Berlin Airlift and the 1950 Oberammergau Play (beautiful to many but, as my mother described it, possibly the most anti-Semitic it had ever been after Hitler's suggested changes for the 300th anniversary in 1934).
I was told the early Holocaust survivors that came to the US found few who wanted to listen to such dreadful stories, instead concentrating on the better things in life.
I saw the same in Cambodian professionals like a Doctor that worked as a helper in our Community College Aeronautics tool room. He like most others wouldn't tell his own children of the horrors their family faced.
It took a long time for survivors to be able to have those who hadn't experienced it really listen here in this country. In a way not discussing it until later years may have helped give time for the German public to sort out their future consideration for Jews. I was a bit surprised to find that Germany seems to have welcomed a higher percentage of returning Jews than other countries.
I had to look that up to believe it might be true. I was inspired to do so from watching the 2023 "Oppenheimer" movie and finding that the leading University for Physics was the Georg August University of Göttingen dramatically changed by the Great Purge of 1933. According to Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_G%C3%B6ttingen#
"...in the 1930s, the university became a focal point for the Nazi crackdown on "Jewish physics", as represented by the work of Albert Einstein. In what was later called the "great purge" of 1933, academics including Max Born, Victor Goldschmidt, James Franck, Eugene Wigner, Leó Szilárd, Edward Teller, Edmund Landau, Emmy Noether, and Richard Courant were expelled or fled. Most of them fled Nazi Germany for places like the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Following the great purge, in 1934 David Hilbert, by then a symbol of German mathematics, was dining with Bernhard Rust, the Nazi minister of education. Rust asked, "How is mathematics at Göttingen, now that it is free from the Jewish influence?" Hilbert replied, "There is no mathematics in Göttingen anymore."
For better or worse we got the best of German Physicists while they eliminated almost all of theirs. Maybe they appreciate them so much more now.
Oberammergau Play
In 1950, playwright Arthur Miller and composer Leonard Bernstein led a petition to cancel the passion play. However, the townspeople defiantly restaged the 1934 play.
In the 1960s, Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, Paul Celan, and other prominent intellectuals called for a boycott due to the play's antisemitism. After Vatican II's attempted reforms (attempted because not accepted by many including in the American Council of Bishops, and such as Opus Dei - bedfellows Mel Gibson and Leonard Leo) even the Catholic Church asked for changes. Not much luck. It is a traveling show. When I lived in Carlinville Illinois (the cornfield 5 hours south of Chicago where Cary Grant got strafed in North by Northwest) public school children were taken to performances. The head of Blackburn College's psychology department had the license plate SS1934. Her husband who had been in that position had killed himself in full Nazi regalia. Each year she took his ashes to Bayreuth to visit with other fans of Hitler. Later Carlinville was named one of the best 100 small towns in America. Yikes!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberammergau_Passion_Play
What I remember was my mother using it as an example of outward appearances, pleasing to the eye, hiding the poisoned hearts and minds. She also thought we (as a people), could be as blind and likely to suffer a similar poisoning because we really weren't that different. It was already there in Germany as far as the Passion Play, but Hitler wanted to use it on steroids so much that he forced so many of the most capable people out of Germany and tried to kill more than the 2/3rds that he did.
Too many in the US were antisemitic but not that antisemitic and some like Harold L. Ickes (a good friend of my wife's grandfather), wanted to help by making it possible for much higher numbers of Jewish refugees to be able to be accepted in the then territory of Alaska as described at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slattery_Report
I believe Ickes pressed for the most he thought possible, but it was not supported by many others, or even FDR who wanted a limit of 10,000 or 10% of refugees allowed into the US. The opposition he ran into, even for limits he thought possible, is one of the more disappointing revelations of our history to me personally.
Marge, thanks for sharing your story. Isn't it amazing how certain experiences stay with us and come to mind?
Isn't it also amazing that things we thought would never happen again are now possible and probable.
Look at Ukraine and at Gaza. It can.
And many more. Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, Cambodia….
Amazing a 13 year old with such capacity to articulate. What was I doing at 13? Ah, being a rebel without a cause. lol.
You were preparing to write your RBG song! Well done!
More likely emulating that Russian statesman, Count Pistov. 🤬
She would fight like Hell. 🤨
Big things come in small packages. ✌️
Yes Michael, I agree ! justice Ginsburg definitely would be horrified by what’s going on now!!!
Justice Ginsberg, also said if you believe in something you must continue to fight for it . Like Hillary said , Justice Ginsberg pave the way for women. We must continue her ledgecy by not given up. Sure we have been pushed back, but doesn't mean we can't do nothing about it. There are thousands of women in this country that are angry and frustrated about Roe v. Wade and civil rights that are going to the polls to vote and let their voices be heard not only for their reproductive rights but for our Democracy. We have a tough fight ahead but I know we will win.
Michael Bales: Remember how Ruth Bader Ginsburg exclaimed that, if Trump were elected, she would emigrate to Canada.
RBG was criticized for saying that.
I -- and I believe you would agree -- thought her fear was perfectly reasonable.
My homeland is in the Rhineland. If I were single, I would move to the Rhineland. Oh, the friendships that are like first-cousins! I love those people. (Realistic, I am bilingual.)
I, for one, heartily seconded RBG: EMIGRATE.
One of my FAVORITE authors is Irmgard Keun ("Gilgi -- Eine von Uns", "das kunstseidene Mädchen," "Nach Mitternacht"). She emigrated from the Third Reich in 1936; Joseph Roth, her lover (and great author) wondered: "What took you so long?" She had fled to Oostende in Flanders.
Which created a problem in 1940, with the Third Reich overtaking the Low Countries. Irmgard Keun FAKED HER OWN DEATH: Even the London Times publicized that Irmgard Keun had taken her own life. But she slid her way back home in Köln (Cologne).
Irmgard Keun managed to stay hidden in plain sight.
Any time: Someone could have denounced her to the Gestapo.
She was cute and pretty, so that may have factored into people liking her around and not denouncing her.
But the Nazis had burnt and forbidden her work, so Irmgard Keun could not afford to be denounced.
From my Walloon (Belgian) Mom, I learned similar and even worse stories during the Third Reich.
No, at the time, from this background, I though RBG in 2016 was quite right: Trump elected: EMIGRATE.
My back up plan: Irish grandparents. Dual citizenship here I come.
Imagine Amy Coney Barrett taking her place...she's rolling around in her grave....
Needless to say, we already have many strong and wise heroes who have been stepping up. I'm remembering that speech by Tom Joad in "The Grapes of Wrath:"Then I'll be all aroun' in the dark. I'll be everywhere — wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there." Good people wont stop.
I agree and I am disgusted at how the spirit and legal insights of Ruth Bader Ginzburg has died with her. Just because the floppy brained McConnell cynically replaced her with a Catholic Zealot should not have interred her works with her bones.
She herself should be the basis for a volcano of protest.
After all Heather emphasizes:
Ginsburg often quoted Justice Louis Brandeis’s famous line, “The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people,” and she advised people to “fight for the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
Yet solitary figure against injustice she fades into the mists.
She was a fighter. I think she'd have saddled up and gone to war for the law she really wanted enshrined and never have resigned herself to accept second class status. I wish we could take abortion out of the equation and fight for equal rights for women across all facets of society - equal pay, equal autonomy, equal opportunity. Unfortunately I think the clump of cells infant is just a poster child for a much deeper misogyny. After all, NC may elect a governor who wants to take away women's suffrage.
Thank you, Sys. I started to watch it and realized I had seen it before. I agree that hope is not a utopian drug but a realistic stance. Obama kindled it. A lot of what's going on now is backlash to his only partial whiteness. I'm not even sure it's racism, but maybe atavistic fear of the other? Pragmatically speaking, though, the cause is less important than the remedy, and Ms. Clayton is a perfect standard bearer. So are Justin Pearson and Maxwell Frost. I actually think Biden is a beacon of hope, because he's evidence that age doesn't equate to antiquated thinking or mental incapacity. There are lots of people who carry the ideals of equality and opportunity - from Katie Hobbs to Pete Buttgieg to Jamie Raskin. Live on hope and get out the vote.