"[T]he Republican party of strict constitutional construction doesn't believe in actually reading the document they'd like to strictly construct" - they don't believe in reading, period. It's a well-known fact among Republicans that reading can lead to homosexuality or, worse still, science.

All you have to do is see what the Bush administration did to the Constitution with the Patriot Act, to know Republicans care little if anything about our Constitution.

As far as reading and Republicans go, the same can be said for Democrats. How many Democrats really read the Health Care bill or any of the other 1,000+ page bills before they voted for them? For that matter, how many read them after they voted for them?

It doesn't matter which political party you are thinking of, they both take their orders from the corporations who fund their campaigns.

I seem to recall the establishment of religion clause was revoked in Article IV of 'The Pet Goat'.

This would be a good time for you, Chris, to read =The True Believer= by Eric Hoffer, first published in 1951. Perhaps the only mass movement in history where the sacred writ was comprehended was the coup of Mao Zedong where the Chinese were obliged to carry a copy of The Red Book upon their person

It obviously doesn't matter what the Constitution actually says; Republicans only use it as a symbol, and trust in their base's ignorance of the actual words to carry them along in promoting whatever the hell they want under the guise of "strict" interpretation.

"It's a goddamn piece of paper!"
-George W. Bush

I'm surprised the Constitution hasn't been confiscated and destroyed as contraband - being written on HEMP.

Yes, it is most distressing that the Republicans fail to pay pious lip-service to the Constitution as rigorously as their conjoined Other party does.

What's being discussed is the Bill of Rights, not the 1787 constitution itself per se. Compared with the USA's first constitution--The Articles of Confederation--the 1787 constitution is an abomination guaranteed to ensure elite control of the government and country, which is exactly what's occured whereas the Articles confered no such ability.

The supposed greatness of the 1787 constitution is the foundation for the myth of American Exceptionalism. It is just a goddamned piece of paper that must be decertified along with the institutions it created and replaced by a better document and new institutions that make elite control of the government and country impossible to achieve.

It should be noted that the plege of allegiance's "under god" was created around the turn of the last century, and in "god we trust" was added to the money after the civil war, over 100 years after the constitution was written and well after the founders had passed away. They were implemented by christian revisionists and the founders of the Constitution would have been horrified by the references to god in such national symbols as it is contrary to the philosophy of a free society and of a government that does not display bias towards religious doctrines.

Jefferson made fun of christians and himself was not christian, but was a deist, along with many other founders. Many writers to the constitution were also free thinkers or deists, not the religious brainwashed, indoctrinated nutjobs that we see with the tea party.

The fact that Republicans actually support censorship as per sujggested by O'donnell also exposes what authoritarian despots these people are who seem to completely redefine the constitution for their own sinister purposes of a corporate state where individuals are enslaved and powerless under corporate elites and with an authoritarian religious christian theocracy. It is truly quite frightening. I partly blame it on the number of persons in this country who apparently the only primary education they had was an education in a religious school.

The fact that in this country we have religious schools where there is a very strong inclination to tilt and bias the information to indoctrinate with religious nonsense, in an illogical way they teach that the bible actually supercedes emperical reality is concerned and perhaps why we have so many people who simply do not know about the fundamentals of a free society, who basically do not live in reality and cannot think critically and seem to constantly lie or cannot see facts or truths. the entire doctrine of mainstream religions is unquestioning obedience not critical thinking and free thinking.

Ive known people whose children actually went to these Religious schools, where the parents actually volunteered their time to go through text books and censor references to evolution and other scientifically supported facts.

Simply the nature of Religious primary schools is concerned. What does science, english and math have to do with Jesus? At least with sunday school the religious doctrine is kept confined to that and is not also contaminating the right of children to an unbiased, fact based, science based education, not one filled with religious mythologies and lies.

There is nothing freedom promoting about Republicans, they are religious nutcases who want to force their religions on others and are corporate fascists who constantly undermine individual liberty with corporate economic and political domination.

I would also like to say that if Palin, O'donnel, et al, had written the constitution we would be living in a christian authoritarian theocracy with gays, free thinkers, those not worshipers of the abrahamic religion, discriminated against, persecuted, perhaps even tortured and killed, witch hunts, wonton and indefinite detentions without trail, ridiculous superstitions leading to arbitrary religious sanctioned violence under religious law, hangings of gays and lesbians, and so on. It seems like these people look fondly back on the good old traditional values of the dark ages where infidels were tortured and killed, gays executed, and all free thought and critical thinking suppressed, and other such murderous madness. Thats why we call them regressives. They are despotic authoritarian personalities. These people long for the days of galileo where independant questioning of religious doctrine was not permitted and facts and evidence were suppressed, where religious irrationality suppressed all other questioning and thought. Clearly Republicans must abhor the true secular nature of the US constitution, and as well the scientific enlightenment in Europe during the 17th century and long for the dark ages of ignorance, brutality, theocracy.

Claiming to love the constitution offers legitimacy for hating the country. The problem with the country then can't be the country as constructed, just the country as liberals made it. When you're about to do something horrific, like the violent takeover of a country, it helps to identify yourself with some higher symbol of what you're after. These people don't need to read the constitution any more than many Bible-thumpers need to read the Bible. They 'know' what it says.

The Tea Partiers are a genuine populist movement that is being played like a Fiddle by the nations owners. They will lose, even if they win. If they win this November, they'll be betrayed by the GOP. That's the point at which they'll get violent, and be encouraged by Faux News/Glenn Beck to engage in Sharon Angles 'Second Amendment Solutions'. Their blunt rage will be told to take unfocused aim at liberal intellectuals who gave the nation away to illegals and bankers. The nation thus destablized, democracy will temporarily be recinded for martial law, and it'll turn fascist.

Or not. But it sure looks that way. Either way, the claim to love the constitution justifies, and romanticizes, the hatred of the country, of what liberals turned the country into. You don't have to travel far into Glenn Beck's 'teachings' to find that out. Since Reagan, American conservatives have feasted on 30 years of disinformation about the nature of the individual and the role of the state. This romantic notion that we're all individual consumers, of goods and political services, not only not connected but preferably DISconnected from any common impulse, allowed the wealthy and WallStreet (which by contrast is all about connection) to 'divide and conquer' the country. All people know is that they've been ripped off and, according the Glenn Beck, the liberal power elite did it. They aren't being told the role THEY played in their own fleecing, but are being wound up like toy soldiers, to be directed into violence, and fascist takeover.

It's important in an article decrying those who don't know the facts of what is in the Constitution to get the facts right and this article gets the facts wrong about O'Donnell.

The following statement is actually incorrect: "The First Amendment added two additional provisions, including the Establishment Clause prohibition against any 'law respecting an establishment of religion' that O'Donnell seemed surprised by in her recent debate."

To those of us not schooled in the religious right's indoctrination it is obvious that the Establishment Clause along with the Freedom of Religion Clause erected a wall of separation between Church and State. But to the religious right this is not so.

O'Donnell was not surprised that the Establishment Clause is in the First Amendment; she was incredulous that anyone would assert that "Separation of Church and State" was in the First Amendment and mocking anyone who identifies the Establishment Clause with the separation of Church and State.

The religious right has created this narrative that the founders did NOT intend a separation of Church and State with the Establishment Clause but only that there not be an official Church of the United States.

When we in turn mock O'Donnell for her views on this and get it wrong what was going on, we do not help ourselves. O'Donnell very well knows what words are in the First Amendment. If that was all that had happened she'd by now know that she was wrong on that. But she is still convinced she was right on this because she was asserting something different, that the words in the First Amendment do not erect the wall of separation that we cherish, so she feels tearing down that wall is a grand, Constitutional thing to do.

My favorite remains Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, when he was Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, during a press conference in late January 2006, arguing with an NBC (I believe) reporter because the reporter said that search warrants required probable cause and Hayden, who was operating the wireless eavesdropping program, insisted that the 4th amendment does not even include the words "probable cause" and added "that's the one amendment we in the NSA really know."

Of course, the 4th does stipulate that warrants only be issued for probable cause.

Hayden's reward for his on-the-air stupidity? In May of that year he was made CIA Director.

"no gods, no masters" --m. sanger

Don't throw the baby (Jesus) out with the bath water. The moral imperatives related in the New Testament are a double edged sword that can be used against any who would claim moral superiority, and use it for "EVIL" ends.
The Bible, like any document, must be used to constrain any who would use it to exercise authority over others. Thus we should employ it in "Discerning the thoughts and intents..." (duplicity) of even a knowledgable zealot, not to mention his useful idiot. If one uses the concordance, false statements can be refuted.

The constitution set up a house of representatives which initially had 65 representatives. By 1911 it had grown to 433 where it was 'fixed' (nice word, eh?) at where it is today (435).

Now what that says to anyone with half a brain is that as our population grew from 1911 to now (some states were added resulting in other states LOSING representatives to maintain the same number), we progressively became LESS and LESS democratic. The senate also became even less democratic than ever because each state was far more populous. The senate started out elitist and oligarchical and became more so. After 1911, the same corrupt, creeping plutocratic takeover strangled the house. Just to get back to the 1911 level of democracy, we would need several THOUSAND representatives. And even that wouldn't be enough. Back in 1911 Rockefeller owned most of them. That's how the federal reserve crooks were created in 1913.

And that's how corporations took us over, folks. Who do you think got the number 'fixed' back in 1911?

That's your homework assignment. And you thought the corporate takeover was recent? And you thought you lived in a representative democratic republic? What a cruel hoax has been played on us.