Lindsey Graham's Smear

No, Ruth Bader Ginsburg does not advocate pederasty.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Friday, Sept. 16, 2005, at 4:00 PM PT

What is Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., smoking? On the fourth day of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on John Roberts, President Bush's nominee for chief justice of the Supreme Court, Graham accused Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of advocating that the age of sexual consent be reduced to 12. Let's go to the transcript:

Well, there are all kind of hearts. There are bleeding hearts and there are hard hearts. And if I wanted to judge Justice Ginsburg on her heart, I might take a hard-hearted view of her and say she's a bleeding heart. She represents the ACLU. She wants the age of consent to be 12. She believes there's a constitutional right to prostitution. What kind of heart is that?

Graham's bizarre smear, deployed to warn Democrats not to come down on Roberts' "value system," was omitted from nearly all news accounts, presumably because no one knew what on earth he could possibly be talking about.