Smearing Chatterbox

Timothy Noah author of a column called "Chatterbox" on Slate has assailed conservatives for "smearing" Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg by pointing out that she had formerly represented the ACLU and had supported lowering the age of consent to 12 and legalizing prostitution. Chatterbox is right. Noah seems to just keep chattering whether he's got anything to say or not.

Justice Ginsburg is not up for confirmation. The whole point of recalling these things, was to point out that those "smears" were not used to derail her confirmation or argue that she should be filibustered. Most people who aren't leftist ideologues don't see most of the arguments against John Roberts as anywhere nearly as extreme as some of the things Ginsburg supported in the past. The point was that if those positions didn't disqualify her as being "out of the mainstream" how much less are Judge Roberts' view justified as grounds to reject him.

In short, Mr. Noah is a hypocrite. We've just witnessed attempt after attempt to make John Roberts looke "insensitive" to Latinos because he referred to "illegal amigos" once in a memo, and hostile to the constitution beccause of legal opinions he rendered 25 years ago. And he thinks repeating knocks on Ginsburg, which weren't used as a reason to vote against her, is "smearing" her. And he's not very bright, either if he thinks this is a way to convince anybody that filibustering Roberts is justified.