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I sincerely hope and believe it is only propaganda and that she said no such thing.Joan Ruth Bader; was born March 15, 1933. She died at the age of 87.From 1961 to 1963, Ginsburg was a research associate and then an associate director of the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure; she even learned Swedish and co-authored a book with Anders Bruzelius on civil procedure in Sweden.Her first position as a professor was at Rutgers Law School in 1963. At the time Ginsburg entered academia, she was one of fewer than twenty female law professors in the United States.In 1970, she co-founded the Women's Rights Law Reporter, the first law journal in the U.S. to focus exclusively on women's rights.From 1972 to 1980, she taught at Columbia Law School, where she became the first tenured woman and co-authored the first law school casebook on sex discriminationGinsburg co-authored the brief for *Reed v. Reed* , in which the Supreme Court extended the protections of the Equal Protection Clause for woman.Ginsburg was nominated by President Jimmy Carter on April 14, 1980, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated by Judge Harold Leventhal upon his death. She was confirmed by the United States Senate on June 18, 1980, and received her commission later that day.President Bill Clinton nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on June 22, 1993, to fill the seat vacated by retiring Justice Byron White.Her achievements include:2002, Inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.Named one of 100 Most Powerful Women (2009),Glamour magazine's Women of the Year 2012One of Time magazine's 100 most influential people (2015).Honorary Doctor of Laws degrees by Willamette University (2009), Princeton University (2010), and Harvard University (2011).Lifetime Achievement Award from Scribes—The American Society of Legal Writers .2009She was married for 56 years to Martin Ginsburg who passed 10 years ago. She is survived by her son and daughter and 4 grandchildren.Ginsburg will lie in state at the Capitol. She will be both the first Jew and the first woman to lie in state therein.I just highlighted her life time achievements. If I was to try to list them all this answer would be a book.The R.B.G as she was called, was dying and she probably knew she was dying.I doubt looking back on the life she had led, the laws she helped enact and change, the man she loved for over 5 decades, and the children she had mothered as well as her grandchildren, her very last thoughts (good or bad) centered on Donald Trump.I would pity anyone whose last dying thought is a politician, any politician even the POTUS. When I first heard this claim it angered me and I am not even a fan of hers. To think that the sum of your life boils down to thinking about a politician on your death bed strikes me as pathetic and the RBG was a lot of things but pathetic wasn't one of those things.I dont believe it.

My first thoughts are that the question is out-of-date, has it backward, and has its courts confused.The order for Clinton’s sit-down deposition was issued in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia as a civil case that Judicial Watch filed against the State Department years ago.In that case, Judge Royce Lamberth dismissed most of Judicial Watch’s requests but granted that its lawyers could depose Clinton about why she chose to use an email account on a private server instead of the State Department’s email system.[1]Clinton—who’s been a target of Judicial Watch since 1995 and is probably sick to death of them—appealed Judge Lamberth’s decision twice to the DC Court of Appeals.To the delight of Hillary-haters everywhere, she lost her first appeal. However, she won the second. (Oh the horror.)On August 14, 2020, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Clinton does not have to appear for a deposition in the case against the State Department.[2]The ruling says,Secretary Clinton has already answered interrogatories from Judicial Watch on these very questions ... explaining the sole reason she used the private account was for 'convenience.'…. But more importantly, even if a deposition of Secretary Clinton were to somehow shake some novel explanation loose after all these years, this new information simply would have no effect on the rights of the parties in this FOIA case, making it 'an inappropriate avenue for additional discovery.'[3]My second thoughts are that, frankly, it’s about time someone called out Judicial Watch for its eternal fishing expedition on the Clintons.Unfortunately, Judicial Watch won’t stop dragging the Clinton’s through the mud any time soon.Decades of anti-Clinton smears and propaganda[4]have made Secretary Clinton a fertile field to plow for the donations that keep Judicial Watch going.It’s a positive feedback loop that goes like this:Judicial Watch stimulates fevered anti-Clinton fantasies of Clinton doing a perp walk in an orange jumpsuit.Hillary-haters send in donations.Judicial Watch uses the money to stimulate more fevered anti-Clinton fantasies.Hillary-haters send in donations.Blah, blah, blah…Footnotes[1] Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Department of State – CourtListener.com[2] Hillary Clinton Can’t Be Deposed Over Use of Private Email Server, Appeals Court Rules | National Law Journal[3] Clinton doesn't have to testify in lawsuit over her emails, appeals court rules[4] Arkansas Project - Encyclopedia of Arkansas

One of the most annoying and pervasive beliefs I have encountered in my time on the internet is the belief that there is a huge conspiracy among scholars or among government agents to “hide the truth” about ancient history. This strange conviction that many people seem to share forms the basis for countless conspiracy theories of all different varieties.For instance, I’ve seen countless people online claiming that academics or the United States government are secretly hiding evidence that aliens really visited Earth in ancient times or evidence for the existence of unknown lost civilizations. Funnily enough, no one actually seems to agree on exactly what kind of “truth” that governments and scholars are hiding; the only thing they all agree on is that, somehow or another, they’re hiding something and its always something big.Unfortunately, for the conspiracy theorists, I’m going to have to burst their bubble; not only are historians and governments not “hiding the truth” about ancient history, but they actually have every motivation to not hide it.Raiders of the Lost Ark and governments hiding ancient artifactsI think that the widespread belief that governments and academics are “hiding” information about ancient history has been significantly popularized by the 1981 action-adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark, directed by Steven Spielberg, with a screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan based on story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman.As most of my readers certainly already know, Raiders of the Lost Ark is about Indiana Jones and his quest to recover the lost Ark of the Covenant. In the end, he does recover the Ark, but it is confiscated by bureaucrats working for the United States government. In the very last scene of the movie, when the bureaucrats are asked where the Ark is, they simply reply that the Ark is “somewhere very safe” and that they have “top men working on it right now.”The final scene of the film shows the Ark being nailed inside a wooden crate marked “Top Secret” and hidden away inside a massive warehouse filled with thousands upon thousands of identical wooden crates so that no one will ever find it. The film heavily implies that the United States government wants to keep the existence of the Ark a secret because it is “too dangerous” for the public to know about. It also implies that the government may be keeping millions of other ancient artifacts locked away without the public’s knowledge or consent.Raiders of the Lost Ark is a work of fiction, but, unfortunately, all too many people believe that, at least on some level, the movie reflects what actual archaeology is like. As I plan to address in a future article at some point, the film’s portrayal of archaeology is almost completely inaccurate in every way. This especially includes the film’s portrayal of the government hiding away ancient artifacts.ABOVE: Screenshot of the final scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, showing the Ark of the Covenant being hidden away inside a massive warehouse where no one will ever find itWhy governments like to display artifacts, not hide them awayFirst of all, as I discuss in this article I published in September 2019, the Ark of the Covenant is almost certainly not sitting in a secret wooden crate in some government warehouse somewhere; it was almost certainly destroyed when the Babylonians under King Nebuchadnezzar II (ruled c. 605 – c. 562 BC) sacked the city of Jerusalem in 587 or 586 BC. In other words, it was almost certainly destroyed millennia ago.Second of all, governments in general and the United States government in particular have very little motivation to want to keep ancient artifacts secret. In the Indiana Jones world, ancient artifacts are objects that have been invested with tremendous mystical powers that can be used to shape the course of history; in the real world, ancient artifacts don’t have magic powers and there’s no danger in letting the public know about them.In fact, governments actually have a huge incentive to put any exciting ancient artifacts they may have in their possession on public display in a national museum, since doing so would allow the national museum to aggressively advertise the artifact, attract lots of guests, and make lots of money.ABOVE: That infamous Nazi face-melting shot from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Believe it or not, real ancient artifacts don’t actually melt faces.Many national museums charge entry fees, meaning, in many cases, the government would actually directly financially profit off putting the artifact on display. Some national museums, such as the Smithsonian Institute, don’t charge entry fees, but putting an artifact in display in one of these museums would still make money for the government indirectly by attracting tourists.Countries with extremely long, rich histories and lots of ancient ruins and artifacts, such as Egypt, Greece, Turkey, and Italy, usually have extremely strict laws and regulations in place to keep their cultural heritage from leaving the country. They do this because they have strong cultural and economic motivations to ensure that all artifacts are kept safe within their borders and that the most precious artifacts are put on permanent public display.If the Ark of the Covenant were found by an archaeologist in Egypt today, it would almost certainly be put on display in a national museum like the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo, where it would attract thousands of guests and probably make lots of money for the Egyptian government. (The Israeli government would probably try to insist that the Ark rightfully belongs in Jerusalem, but the Egyptian government would no doubt refuse to give them the Ark, probably resulting in a decades-long international feud. That’s all beside the point, though.)ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the great gallery of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo. If the Ark of the Covenant were really found by an archaeologist somewhere in Egypt, it would almost certainly end up in a museum like this one.That other place artifacts can end up: billionaires’ mansionsOf all governments, the United States government is one that has especially little interest in ancient history or ancient artifacts. This is partly because there are so few ancient ruins and artifacts in the United States. Unfortunately, partly as a result of this, the United States has some of the weakest laws pertaining to ancient artifacts out of all countries in the developed world and courts in the United States have a history of siding with people trying to sell or buy stolen artifacts rather than the original owners of said artifacts.For instance, as I discuss in this article from November 2019, the Archimedes Palimpsest is a medieval Byzantine manuscript that is known for certain to have been stolen from the Metochion of the Holy Sepulcher, a library in Istanbul owned by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, in around 1920 during the Greco-Turkish War (lasted 1919 – 1922). In 1998, after having been missing for over half a century, the palimpsest came up for auction at Christie’s Auction House in New York City.The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem immediately sued Christie’s for ownership of the manuscript, since it had been theirs before it was stolen, but a United States judge for the Southern District of New York ruled in favor of Christie’s, saying that the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem had not made substantial enough efforts to recover their stolen property in the seventy-eight years since it had been stolen and that they had therefore forfeited all right to ownership of it.The manuscript was subsequently sold for two million dollars to an individual identified only as “Mr. B.” who was described by his representative as “a private American” who worked in “the high-tech industry” who was “not Bill Gates.” The anonymous “Mr. B.” is widely believed to be Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon and the current richest man in the world.ABOVE: Photograph from the Encyclopedia Britannica of Jeff Bezos, who is currently the richest man in the world and probably the current owner of the Archimedes PalimpsestWhere ancient artifacts would really end upIf an amazing and unbelievable ancient artifact is discovered somewhere, where it ends up depends greatly on who finds it. If the artifact is found by archaeologists, then it will most likely be carefully catalogued and information about it will be published in an academic journal.The artifact itself will most likely end up being put on permanent public display in a national museum, where it will most likely attract lots of guests from all over the world. For instance, the Antikythera mechanism, which I wrote about in this article from December 2019, is currently on public display in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.If the artifact is discovered by looters, however, then chances are it will be sold around the black market for a few decades before eventually winding up at an auction house where it will probably be sold for millions of dollars. The object itself will most likely wind up as a decoration in some American billionaire’s private mansion or maybe locked away in a billionaire’s secret storage vault.Thus, if anyone is hiding ancient artifacts from the public, it’s probably billionaires like Jeff Bezos, not scholars and not the United States government. The artifacts these people may be hiding are almost certainly not on the same scale of significance as the Ark of the Covenant, but they may be significant nonetheless.Governments forcing scholars to hold specific views on ancient history?Many people who believe that the government is hiding the truth about ancient history don’t just think that the government is hiding ancient artifacts, though; they often also believe that the government is suppressing scholars and making sure scholars don’t say anything that conflicts with what the government wants people to believe.For the vast majority of countries on Earth, this belief is ridiculous. There are a few autocratic countries like North Korea where scholars aren’t allowed to disagree with the government’s orthodoxy, but, in the vast majority of countries, the government doesn’t really have any involvement at all in what scholars write about the ancient world.The fact is, for better or worse, governments in general tend to have very little awareness of academic disputes pertaining to matters of ancient history. Indeed, governments and politicians generally don’t particularly care about ancient history much at all—except in very particular instances in which a specific aspect of ancient history pertains to a specific national concern. (The first example of this that comes to mind is the whole Macedonia naming controversy.)Even if they wanted to, by their very nature, governments are pretty much incapable of completely subjecting scholars to their will, because there is such a thing as other countries. If the United States government mandated that all scholars must believe something that’s clearly wrong, you’d have all the scholars in, say, Russia or Greece or Australia insisting that it’s obviously ridiculous and vice versa.ABOVE: Map from Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Macedonia_overview.svg) showing various “Macedonias”Scholars themselves intentionally hiding the truth?There are lots of people who believe that scholars themselves are intentionally hiding the truth about ancient history. These people think that scholars have some kind of evidence that “proves” the traditional historical narrative is wrong in some way, but they’re intentionally suppressing it because they don’t think the public will understand or they think it’s too dangerous to reveal. This is the most untenable thesis of all, however, and it shows a complete lack of awareness of what academic culture is really like.Academics are under constant pressure to publish new ideas and arguments pertaining to the field they study. Typically, it is expected that an academic needs to publish at least one research article a year to maintain their reputation. Scholars are also under pressure to make their new ideas as innovative and original as possible while still keeping them well-supported.If any real-world academic found genuine, compelling evidence that totally overturned everything we thought we knew about ancient history, they wouldn’t hide that evidence away out of fear that it was “too radical for the public to handle.” No! Of course not! They would publish their evidence in the best peer-reviewed journal that would accept it. In other words, scholars would be all over that stuff in minutes.Some of the conspiracy theorists will doubtlessly insist that the journals would surely all reject it because they’re afraid of new ideas, but this is, of course, a false assumption. Academic journals are just as desperate for new ideas and materials as scholars are. The only reason why they would reject a new and original argument would if it is clearly unsupported by the evidence. That’s why articles about ancient aliens and Atlantis and so forth tend to not end up in academic journals; it’s because arguments for those sorts of things have so little evidence to support them that they’re impossible to take seriously.It’s worth noting that poorly-supported arguments do get published in peer-reviewed academic journals all the time—just not usually ones pertaining to aliens and so forth. For instance, in this article from last month, I debunked a claim made by researchers that they had reconstructed the actual voice of the 3,000-year-old Egyptian priest Nesyamun based on his surviving mummy.As common sense probably tells most people, accurately reconstructing the voice of a person who has been dead for 3,000 years based only on his mummified and damaged vocal tract is impossible. Despite this, the researchers’ claim to have reconstructed the priest’s voice somehow made it into the reputable British academic journal Scientific Reports.That’s just one of the literally countless examples of speculative and poorly-supported arguments that have wormed their way into peer-reviewed journals. Part of the reason why this stuff makes it into journals is because academic journals aren’t nearly as afraid of new and controversial ideas as the conspiracy theorists think.ABOVE: Top of the page for the article about the researchers who claimed to have reconstructed the voice of the 3,000-year-old mummy. Even really weird, wildly speculative stuff can wind up in peer-reviewed journals.ConclusionThere isn’t a conspiracy among scholars or government agents to “hide the truth” about ancient history. Government agents generally aren’t particularly interested in matters of ancient history—certainly not interested enough to hide evidence that totally undermines everything we think we know. When governments do come into possession of extremely rare and astounding artifacts, it’s to their advantage to put them on display.Finally, scholars themselves aren’t engaging in a conspiracy to cover up evidence, because it is actually to scholars’ advantage to be open about the evidence. Presenting new evidence and new arguments is good for a scholar’s career. The idea that there is a huge conspiracy to hide evidence from the public is just totally unsupported by evidence.(NOTE: I have also published a version of this article on my website titled “No, There Isn’t a Conspiracy to ‘Hide the Truth’ about Ancient History.” Here is the link to the version of the article on my website.)