H.B, R.B.G.

I had a record when I was a kid, a canary yellow 45 rpm on one side of which was a birthday song that went something like this:

          Today, today, today, today,

          today, today is your birthday.
          It’s not the beaver’s or the bears;
          It’s not the pickle’s or the pears.
          Hooray, hooray, hooray, hooray,

          today, today is your birthday.

It’s not. I was born in October, not long before the beginning of the second half of the previous century.  Not too long before that:

There is an interesting, informative, and fun interview of the Senior Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, by Jeffrey Rosen, legal affairs editor at The New Republic and president and CEO of the National Constitution Center. It may be found online here.

Among the questions Rosen asks is this: “What’s the worst ruling the current Court has produced?”

     Ruth Bader Ginsburg replies in part, “If there was one decision I would overrule, it would be Citizens United. I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be. So that’s number one on my list. Number two would be the part of the health care decision that concerns the commerce clause. Since 1937, the Court has allowed Congress a very free hand in enacting social and economic legislation. I thought that the attempt of the Court to intrude on Congress’s domain in that area had stopped by the end of the 1930s. . . . Perhaps number three would be Shelby County, involving essentially the destruction of the Voting Rights Act. . . . The bill extending the Voting Rights Act was passed overwhelmingly by both houses, Republicans and Democrats . . . . The Court’s interference with that decision of the political branches seemed to me out of order. The Court should have respected the legislative judgment. Legislators know much more about elections than the Court does. And the same was true of Citizens United. I think members of the legislature, people who have to run for office, know the connection between money and influence on what laws get passed.

                        Celebrate, celebrate. Dance to the music!