From Rick Santorum’s web site (HT PJ Tatler):

Today Mitt Romney’s well financed seek and destroy attack machine turned its sights on Rick Santorum. And the reason is clear. Recent polling data strongly suggests that Rick Santorum is by far Romney’s most significant opponent.

Polling results just released today by Magellan Strategies BR show Rick Santorum beating Romney in Missouri. Polling results by Public Policy Polling, also show Rick Santorum beating Romney in Minnesota, and catching up to Romney in Colorado. Polls earlier last week showed Rick Santorum ahead of Romney in Missouri and Ohio.

And according to a Rasmussen survey released yesterday, while Mitt Romney loses to Barack Obama by 4 points in a potential matchup, Rick Santorum is ahead of Obama 45% to 41% 44%. This last piece of information is particularly damaging to Romney because it destroys his argument that he is the strongest opponent to defeat Obama. It also reveals that a trusted conservative is better positioned to defeat Obama than a moderate who agrees with Obama on big government healthcare mandates, government bailouts, and radical cap and trade initiatives.

Well, well.

________________________________________________

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has endorsed Santorum, writing that “Santorum is the last consistent conservative standing, and the only one both promoting the conservative agenda and campaigning as a conservative in the race.“

From CNS News:

Santorum Only GOP Candidate Beating Obama, Rasmussen Daily Poll Finds

Just ahead of three more Republican nominating contests, a new poll — a snapshot in time — shows former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum leading President Barack Obama in a one-on-one matchup.
The Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Poll for one day only — Feb. 5. — marks the first time Santorum has held a lead over Obama in potential matchups.

It’s a small lead for Santorum — 1 percentage point, giving him a 45-44 percent edge over Obama.

“This is the first time Santorum has ever led the president in any poll,” the Rasmussen poll said. “Several other GOP challengers have led the president a single time in the polls, including Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich. Each man briefly held the lead while they were surging in the polls, only to fall quickly. It remains to be seen what will happen to Santorum’s support.”

The same daily tracking poll finds Obama actually beating former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the GOP frontrunner, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul. Neither Obama nor the other GOP candidates gets a majority in any of the hypothetical matchups.

Well, well.

By the way, Michelle Malkin has endorsed Rick Santorum for the GOP nomination.

So do I.

So should everyone who evaluates his competition and understands all that is at stake.

The following was forwarded to me on Saturday morning. I held off publishing it until now so I can keep it at or near the top most of Monday.

The email confirmed a suspicion I expressed on Friday when I wondered:

Did the vote really require a majority only of those present, or did it really require a majority of all members?

The answer, as seen below, is: “Votes such as these require a majority of all members (regardless of whether they voted), except when ORP Chairman Kevin DeWine unilaterally says it doesn’t.”

Here goes (bolds are mine):

Greetings,

The Ohio GOP State Central Committee met today to consider Chairman DeWine’s proposed “Power Play Amendment” to disqualify candidates on the ballot for state central committee in the midst of an election that is already underway.

The vote was 29-28 in favor of the Power Play Amendment, and Chairman DeWine ruled that it had passed. The Bylaws require that a majority of all state central committee members (34) is required to pass such an amendment; DeWine’s ruling is in direct violation of the Bylaws and is thereby legally null and void.

We now have a tyrant who practices open contempt not only for the majority of the rank and file members of his party, but for the Permanent Rules of the party, running the Ohio GOP. If there was any doubt remaining, let it be gone.

We are trying to get a roll call of how state central committee members voted so that we can forward that information to you.

More later.

Best regards,
Jim Woods

I hope Kevin DeWine realizes that as long as he remains chair until the day he resigns, this action will be justifiably referenced by opponents as evidence of utter hypocrisy every time an Ohio Republican or conservative suggests basic measures relating to electoral integrity.

I don’t see how this can possibly just blow over and go away. It’s surely doing damage already, which will continue as long as DeWine remains party chairman.

Not Indiana, Hoosier State Governor Mitch Daniels, or those who attended yesterday’s Super Bowl (HT Gateway Pundit via Instapundit):

A small group of about 50 activists marched to Lucas Oil Stadium where the Super Bowl will be played later on Sunday to peacefully protest Indiana’s new anti-union “right-to-work” law.
Indiana on Wednesday became the 23rd state in the nation and the first in the U.S. industrial heartland to adopt a law allowing workers to avoid paying union dues at unionized businesses.

Supporters led by Indiana’s Republican Governor Mitch Daniels have said it was necessary to attract jobs to the state. Critics including Democrats and unions called it “union busting” and have said it would lead to lower wages.

The small group of protesters walked peacefully the five blocks from downtown Indianapolis to the stadium, although the demonstrators were heckled along the route by some of the people they passed.

“I think they need to get jobs,” said Jeff Eichler, who was visiting Indianapolis from Baltimore, Maryland.

… The AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. labor federation, released a statement last week saying it did not “plan nor condone any attempts to disrupt the Super Bowl.”

A recent Rasmussen poll indicated that right-to-work’s national support is at 74%, and that “just 15% of Likely U.S. Voters think workers who do not belong to a union should be required by law to pay union dues if the company they work for is unionized.”

Who’s out of the mainstream now?

Rules are here. Possible comment fodder may follow later. Other topics are also fair game.

__________________________________________

From Vatican City:

Jan 29, 2012 / 04:51 pm

The power of Jesus Christ is manifested in humble service and love, Pope Benedict XVI said in his Sunday Angelus address on Jan. 29.

“For man, authority often means possession, power, control, success,” the Pope said to thousands of pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square.

“For God, however, authority means service, humility, love,” he continued, “it means entering into the logic of Jesus who stoops to wash the disciples’ feet, who seeks the true good of man, who heals wounds, who is capable of a love so great as to give up his life, because he is Love.”

The Pope’s made his comments as part of a reflection on today’s Gospel reading in which an unclean spirit identifies Jesus Christ as the “Holy One of God,” during his travels in Galilee. The Pope observed how Jesus heals both spiritually and physically through his teaching and miracles.

“In a short time, his fame spread throughout the region, which he travels announcing the Kingdom of God and healing the sick of all kinds: word and action.”

He then quoted the fifth-century Church father St. John Chrysostom, who noted that Jesus “alternates the speech for the benefit of those who listen, moving on from wonders to words and again passing from the teaching of his doctrine to miracles.”

The Pope suggested that Jesus’ use of words immediately opened up most of those listening to “the will of the Father and the truth about themselves.” However, the scribes who “struggled to interpret the Holy Scriptures with countless reflections” were not open to his words.

Therefore, Jesus also united to his words to miraculous actions as “signs of deliverance from evil,” the pontiff explained. He further recalled how St. Athanasius, the third-century Church father, would say that the “commanding and driving out demons is not human but divine work” and demonstrates how Jesus “distanced men from all diseases and infirmities.”

“Divine authority is not a force of nature.” Instead, it is “the power of the love of God who created the universe and, in becoming incarnate in His only begotten Son, in coming down to our humanity, heals the world corrupted by sin.” …

Go here for the rest of the story.

“So it’s clear to me that Romney is running against the Tea Party.”

– Rush Limbaugh; July 6, 2011

Exactly what has changed in the intervening seven months to disabuse any reasonable person of Rush’s assertion?

Nothing.

Has anything changed in the belief most recently expressed by Romney adviser and former U.S. Senator Norm Coleman that ObamaCare won’t be repealed? No.

Has Mitt renounced his love for the individual mandate, which if preserved or reintroduced will really mean that ObamaCare really wasn’t repealed? Nope.

Has he stepped away from his fling with the idea of a VAT (value added) tax, with apparently no other taxes repealed to offset their impact (as was the case with Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan which would abolish the payroll tax)? Nope.

Most important, has he given any indication of remorse or regret for serially violating the Massachusetts Constitution and the oath of office he swore to in early 2003 when he unilaterally imposed same-sex marriage in the Bay State in the wake of the Goodridge opinion? No way; he continues to falsely claim that doing so was the only option available. He’s wrong. Rick Santorum courageously pointed to most of the history in the final Iowa debate, including mentioning the fact that Romney did what he did to keep a promise to the Log Cabin Republicans.

Thus it is that the timing of a Washington Post op-ed from far, far, left field today by Theda Skocpol should be looked upon with extreme suspicion.

You see, Ms. Skocpol, who has allegedly studied the Tea Party movement, contends that Mitt Romney is a stealth Tea Party candidate who, if he wins the presidency, will give the movement all it wants without its name and its supposed associated negatives never having to be mentioned during the presidential campaign During the campaign, he is supposedly “endorsing the essence of the movement while remaining unburdened by its public label.” She claims she really believes that after over a year of researching the movement. She can’t possibly claim to be doing legitimate work if she hasn’t heard Tea Party-sympathetic people express frequent heated disdain for Mitt Romney, RomneyCare, and his other big-government and constitution-betraying tendencies for months on end.

So I’m not buying your sincerity, Ms. Skocpol. To me, this look like a transparent attempt to do two things directly relating to the presidential election:

1. Cement the nomination for Romney by moving the one constituency with whom, despite your claim that he got half of Tea Partiers in Florida, he has made little headway into his corner (“hey, if this far lefty says this, we need to go to Romney”). If enough Tea Partiers bite, it finishes off Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.
2. Begin the “scary, dangerous conservative” campaign against supposed nominee Romney in the fall — just like John McCain was turned into a dangerous scary conservative by the press in the fall of 2008. Romney is in no way conservative; just ask him.

There is a third agenda item which is longer-term in nature: Labeling a squish Republican left-leaning moderate as a conservative means that every one to the right of him — even if it’s really a majority of the nation — can be tagged as an unreasonable extremist by the press and the RINO establishment, and thus people whose voices should be marginalized out of the political process.

The fact that Ms. Skocpol is from Massachusetts is enough to make you wonder if Team Romney or someone close to them in the GOP establishment who is too worried to resist Item 1, too dumb to recognize Item 2, and doesn’t at all mind Item 3, put her up to it. Readers will find more than enough inanity in her column to raise questions about what she thinks she knows and how she thinks she knows it.

Not going after the real enemy.

________________________________________

Note: This column went up at PJ Media and was teased here at BizzyBlog on Friday.

________________________________________

Across America, state Republican parties and legislators are pursuing the opponents they most despise with renewed vigor.

You would think that the targets of these efforts are President Barack Obama and Democratic Party officeholders who are hell-bent on turning America into a financially broken, post-constitutional, Washington-controlled playground safe only for crony capitalists and regulators gone wild. You would be wrong.

In Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Utah, to name just four, state GOP establishments are laboring mightily to marginalize the millions of constitutional conservatives whose activist energy (but not their outlook) dates back to the beginnings of the Tea Party movement three years ago. By their behavior, it’s clear that those who run many state parties and quite a few incumbent moderate Republican lawmakers are more threatened than pleased at the results of the 2010 elections, when the GOP took back the U.S. House and significantly improved its representation in statehouses and state legislatures. Oh, they’re happy with the majorities they have, and want to pick up control of the U.S. Senate this time around. They just don’t like many of the people who won the races which gave them those majorities, would rather not see any more interlopers come in and try to upset the status quo, and are targeting several newbies for political extinction.

Six-term Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, intent on preventing another coup like the one which ousted incumbent Bob Bennett two years ago at the party’s primary convention, has been Tea Party posing ever since. “Out of the blue,” Hatch, who has been notoriously unreliable on fiscal issues (lifetime Club For Growth score: 74%, which suddenly went to 97% during calendar 2010), has taken an interest in public pension reform. Though he has two conservative challengers, Michelle Malkin noted several months ago that “vendors, pollsters, and campaign literature printers in Utah have all been scared off doing any work” for anyone not named Orrin Hatch.

In Florida, Congressman Allen West, a Tea Party favorite, has seen his name floated as a potential vice presidential nominee. That clearly hasn’t impressed the state’s legislature, which has redrawn West’s district “to include substantially more Democrats within it … many more than other Republican incumbents.” The “inspiration” for this move is state representative Will Weatherford, who just so happens to be Mitt Romney’s Sunshine State spokesperson. Why am I not surprised? In response, West announced that he will run for “reelection” in a different district.

In heavily Catholic Pennsylvania, Democrat Senator Bob Casey is extremely vulnerable, both for generally hewing to the Obama agenda and for his support of ObamaCare, which among other things has led to regulations effective next year which would force all hospitals to provide contraceptive services with no conscience exceptions. Sadly, the Keystone State’s GOP, which stuck with Democrat-turned Republican-turned Democrat Arlen Specter for decades while treating conservative stalwart Pat Toomey like a leper, is on track to blow it. Under intense pressure from Governor Tom Corbett, who seems to have forgotten that he owes his job to Tea Party supporters who latched onto his promise not to raise taxes, the party has endorsed Steve Welch over three other far more acceptable contestants. Welch voted for Obama in 2008 and supported Toomey’s far-left U.S. Senate opponent Joe Sestak (4% lifetime Club For Growth rating) in 2010. From all appearances, based on after-the-fact complaints I have read and an advance warning that it would happen from Christopher Friend, the party which opposes “card check” in union organizing failed to hold a secret endorsement ballot.

I hope that Welch’s challengers and their supporters appreciate what they’re up against. They should seriously consider uniting on one candidate, because the state’s party apparatus has surely taken notes on how to fend off status quo disrupters from Kevin DeWine and Ohio’s establishment Republicans. Having more than one candidate besides Welch will virtually guarantee the others’ defeat. Readers will see why shortly.

In 2010, DeWine, chairman of the Buckeye State’s Republican Party (or, as I prefer to call it, ORPINO, the Ohio Republican Party In Name Only), successfully fended off Tea Party-supported primary insurgents in two statewide races. At the same time, he orchestrated a campaign to protect State Central Committee supporters from Tea Party challengers which was so dishonest that it might make even Team Obama blush. It included largely false claims in flyers and ads that ORPINO’s favored candidates had “Tea Party Values,” and dispatching poll watchers throughout the state on Election Day to hand out slate cards supporting the establishment’s statewide ticket and individual Central Committee members.

Because of ORPINO’s extraordinary related primary spending spree, Kevin’s coffers were apparently so low that according to House Majority Leader Bill Batchelder, DeWine asked potential donors to steer their money to the party instead of to individual candidates. On top of that:

A source close to (now-governor John) Kasich said that DeWine, a month before the 2010 elections, asked donors not to give to Kasich, and instead to give to the candidacies of Republicans Jon Husted and Dave Yost, who were running for secretary of state and auditor, respectively.

Everyone knew that Kasich was in a tightening race against incumbent Governor Ted Strickland. Kasich won by only 2% of the vote.

This sordid saga has led me and many others in Ohio to believe that DeWine wouldn’t mind if the generally Tea Party-sympathetic Kasich becomes so damaged that he decides not to run for reelection in 2014, clearing the way for ORPINO golden boy Husted. That Husted lived illegally outside of his district when he was a state rep and state senator (my opinion, and sadly not that of the courts) and did a complete about-face on the need to require voter identification at the polls once he was safely elected (now he thinks that voter-ID is a really bad idea) seem not to matter. Husted is currently attempting to visit all 88 Ohio counties because he claims it will help him perform better in his current position. Sure, John.

Some people I have spoken to believe that it was naive of Kasich to expect that DeWine would become constructive after giving in to a purge of most of his staff after the 2010 elections. Really? When was the last time Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz openly and bitterly criticized the Obama administration? Unfortunately, DeWine hasn’t mellowed a bit, and the two are openly feuding. Kasich is attempting to run an opposition Central Committee slate in this year’s primary which I fear is destined to suffer the same fate as the attempt two years ago. Just in case my prediction is wrong, DeWine is trying to rewrite the Central Committee qualification rules at the last minute to prevent insurgent winners who haven’t voted in the last three statewide primaries from being seated.

A state party chairman who is at serious loggerheads with his governor should recognize the need to step aside in favor of someone who will cooperate. Kevin DeWine won’t do that. Unless something changes, and quickly, the center-right atmosphere in this most important of swing states in next month’s primary and the fall general election will be quite acrid.

This leads to potentially the biggest problem of them all, which is that the GOP establishment and its pundit class constitute the sorest of sore losers. They have expected genuine conservatives to swallow their pride for decades and vote for moderate squishes who were in some ways barely better than their Democratic brethren (e.g., John McCain, Bob Dole, and Gerald Ford nationally, as well as more state and local candidates than one can hope to count). But as was the case in 1980 with Ronald Reagan, it appears that there is no establishment desire to reciprocate and provide meaningful resources to the winners if their people lose, starting with Mitt Romney and his acolytes at the national level and moving on down from there — even if it leads to Barack Obama’s reelection.

Please, people. Say it isn’t so.

Rules are here. Possible comment fodder may follow later. Other topics are also fair game.

__________________________________________

By J. Christian Adams, from Virginia (bold is mine; the full column recounts astonishing events after Father Dyer’s ordination):

This is a true story about Rich Dyer, a Virginia man who never expected to become a priest, but became one sooner than he expected. Dyer, 48, left behind a successful career in business after hearing a calling to the priesthood.

Some of you don’t believe in miracles, and others are certain they exist. But, this is a story for the multitudes who still wonder. C.S. Lewis, in Surprised by Joy, his autobiography of his journey from atheism to faith said, “You may take any number of wrong turnings; but keep your eyes open and you will not be allowed to go very far before the warning signs appear.”

Naturally, it would be easy if bushes regularly burned and spoke, erasing all doubt. But revelations so cheap and easy, dispense with human freewill. How difficult would moral choices be when faith has no role? If the answers were so obvious, goodness and grace would not be human choices, but rather servile obedience to a revealed omnipotent.

Instead of miracles, many have experienced a weighty and unmistakable synchronicity, where seemingly impossible events occur. Answered prayers fall into this category. But so do smaller revelations, joyous moments when blessings reveal themselves in hindsight, blessings that once seemed ordinary, or even dreadful. Those who have experienced this weighty synchronicity know there is no such thing as a coincidence.

C.S. Lewis described moments of revelations as being “surprised by joy.” Sometimes they are as gentle as an unseen sparrow’s song that reminds you spring has arrived. Other times, they are as bold and unforgettable as a grand pastel sunset.

Last December, the unusual ordination of Father Rich Dyer took place in Virginia.

For those unfamiliar with the Catholic priesthood, a brief aside. Holy orders, when a priest is ordained, is one of the seven Catholic sacraments. Seminarians study for years before being ordained. Beyond study, seminarians seek to discern whether they are truly called to the priesthood. After they complete their studies, conclude that they are committed to the vocation, and are called to orders by their local bishop, priests are ordained by the bishop of the diocese. In the Diocese of Arlington (Virginia), this occurs in June of each year in a celebratory mass. Canon law vests the bishop with authority to alter the date of the ordination, but use of this power is not common.

In the summer of 2011, Rich Dyer learned that his father was sick with cancer. His fellow seminarians asked him if he considered asking Bishop Paul Loverde for special permission to be ordained early.

The week before his December finals at Mt. St. Mary’s Seminary in Maryland, Dyer had his regular meeting with a representative of Bishop Loverde. He wondered if anyone had ever been ordained ahead of schedule. He wrote to Bishop Loverde: “I seek God’s will. I do not know what His will is regarding the date of my priestly ordination, but I know and trust that He speaks through you. I am not asking that you accelerate my ordination date, only that you prayerfully discern God’s will regarding it and then communicate this will to me.”

It appeared to Dyer, and anybody else, that a December ordination was impossible, and January was unlikely because the bishop would be in Rome. An early ordination, if it were to occur, could only be in February.

Then on Tuesday, December 20, Dyer received a telephone call. The bishop had read and considered the letter. Dyer was given the choice to be ordained as regularly scheduled on June 9, 2012, or, if Dyer wished to be ordained earlier, the Bishop was available … the following Tuesday, December 27. …

Do not fail to read the rest of Mr. Adams’ column.

On Wednesday, Kyle Drennen at NewsBusters noted how NBC news anchor Brian Williams, chief environmental correspondent Anne Thompson, and old reliable global warming proponent Dr. Gerald Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research took advantage of this year’s mild winter in the lower 48 U.S. states as an excuse to argue that “our warming world is shifting the odds against a traditional winter, winters as we have known them.”

Well folks, winterize this report about Eastern Europe’s deadly serious cold spell carried at a German web site (HT Expatica; bolds are mine):

Eastern Europe’s weeklong cold spell continued on Friday with at least 164 people reported to have fallen victim to freezing weather conditions.

Temperatures plunged to minus 35 degrees Celsius (minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit) in some regions, prompting power outages, traffic chaos and the widespread closure of schools, nurseries and airports.

Worst hit was Ukraine which recorded an additional 38 deaths on Friday, bringing the total number of weather-related fatalities in the country to 101. Thousands of people sought shelter in government centers and more than 1,200 were hospitalized as temperatures plunged to around minus 32 degrees Celsius.

There were eight newly reported cold-related deaths in Poland, bringing the overall death toll to 37. In Romania, there have been 22 deaths. Serbia has also reported causalities while at least 11,000 villagers remained trapped by heavy show in the country’s remote mountain villages.

… In Bulgaria, 16 towns recorded their lowest temperatures since records began. Deaths have been reported there as well as in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia and Lithuania, where a homeless man was found in the ruins of an abandoned house.

Europe’s homeless population has been worst hit by what experts say is Europe’s harshest winter in decades.

… European weather forecasters have warned the severe cold is likely to persist in many parts of continental Europe into next week.

Despite the high death toll, Eastern Europe’s awful cold hasn’t made the news in the U.S. Hmmm.

Unlike the shameless opportunists at NBC, I’m not going to use the above to argue that the world is cooling. I will say that in any given year, it’s not that unusual for certain parts of the world to be having remarkably mild winters while others experience record or near-record lows. Neither are in and of themselves relevant to whether or not global temperatures are in some kind of permanent upward or downward movement.

Someone needs to tell Brian Williams, everyone at NBC, and Dr. Meehl that there has been no global warming since 1997.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, on a trip underwritten by the U.S. State Department (aren’t justices expected to keep their distances from the government to protect their perceived impartiality?), was in Egypt on Wednesday at a Cairo University law school seminar. While there, according to the Associated Press’s Mark Sherman, she told students that (in Sherman’s words) “she was inspired by last year’s protests that led to the end of Hosni Mubarak’s regime” and to speak to them (in her words) “during this exceptional transitional period to a real democratic state.” The news that Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist parties now control about 75% of the seats in the country’s parliament seems not to have registered with Ginsburg or Sherman — or, for that matter, the State Department.

Sherman’s AP story failed to note what Ms. Ginsburg said about the U.S. Constitution in an Egyptian TV interview, as did virtually all of the rest of the establishment press. ABC’s Ariane de Vogue is currently the most notable exception, but as readers will see, she clearly buried the lede. Here are key paragraphs from her report (the related video is at Hot Air; the relevant portion begins at the 9:28 mark; bolds are mine):

Ginsburg Likes S. Africa as Model for Egypt

Amid fresh clashes in Egypt, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo has posted an Alhayat TV interview of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

… “It is a very inspiring time, that you have overthrown a dictator, and that you are striving to achieve a genuine democracy,” the U.S. Supreme Court associate justice says. “So I think people in the United States are hoping that this transition will work, and that there will genuinely be a government of, by, and for the people.”
She says that after meeting with the head of the election commission, she was pleased to see that the recent elections in Parliament’s lower chamber were considered free and fair.

… Asked by the English-speaking interviewer whether she thought Egypt should use the Constitutions of other countries as a model, Ginsburg said Egyptians should be “aided by all Constitution-writing that has gone on since the end of World War II.”

“I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a Constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the Constitution of South Africa,” says Ginsburg, whom President Clinton nominated to the court in 1993. “That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, had an independent judiciary. … It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done. Much more recent than the U.S. Constitution.”Ginsburg, who spent her career before taking the bench advocating for gender equality, praised

the U.S. Constitution and the founders, saying, “we were just tremendously fortunate in the U.S. that the men that met in Philadelphia were very wise.” But “it’s true that they were lacking one thing, that is there were no women as part of the Constitutional Convention, but there were women around who sparked the idea.”

Ginsburg said “we are still forming the more perfect union” and noted that “when the Constitution was new in the 1780s, we still had slavery in the U.S.”

Historians with deeper knowledge than yours truly can perhaps enlighten us all as to who these women were who “sparked the idea” of America’s Constitution, and without whom we apparently would never have had one.

A Google News search at 9:30 this morning Eastern Time on “Ruth Bader Ginsburg constitution” covering the past week (not in quotes, sorted by date, with duplicates) returned 120 results, the vast majority of which were Sherman’s report carried at different AP outlets. Of the roughly eight remaining results besides de Vogue’s ABC report, only one story at the International Business Times might arguably be considered a mainstream media report.

Of the others, the reaction from the Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver is noteworthy: “Justice Ginsburg failed to respect the authority of the document that it is her duty to protect. When given the opportunity to promote American liberty abroad, Justice Ginsburg did just the opposite and pointed Egypt in the direction of progressivism and the liberal agenda.” Good point, especially since South Africa’s constitution, as Hot Air’s Allahpundit observes, “includes welfare-state guarantees like the right to housing and the right to health care.” I would also bet against the idea that South Africa’s constitution has anything like our Second Amendment. If no such provision is there, Justice Ginsburg, based on her position in the Heller vs. DC case, would consider that a feature, and not a bug.

The reaction of lefty David Weigel at Slate (“Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Banal Point, Destroys the Republic”) is a predictable straw man argument: “I don’t see how you could argue the opposite — all transitional democracies should start with the Constitution we wrote in 1787! — unless you’re writing a Toby Keith song or something.” It’s as if Weigel doesn’t really believe that the amendments passed since the original Constitution was drafted aren’t even part of it.

The New York Times, based on the results an advanced search on the justice’s name which shows no stories about her during the past week, at least has the lame excuse that it didn’t cover Ginsburg’s visit at all.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.