When the Constitution Gets in the Way of the Right's Agenda

I think we're all familiar now with how the right fawns over the Constitution. They even went so far as to mark their property the other day by reading it into the Congressional record, just not all of it. It kind of reminds me of how my dog pisses on trees when I walk him to mark his territory. Except sometimes that damn document just gets in the way of hating foreigners and loving church in public. Slate ran a great piece on how the right absolutely loves the Constitution, except for the 1st, 14th, 16th, and 17th amendments (I'll throw in the Supremacy Clause for good measure):

This newfound attention to the relationship between Congress and the Constitution is thrilling and long overdue. Progressives, as Greg Sargent points out, are wrong to scoff at it. This is an opportunity to engage in a reasoned discussion of what the Constitution does and does not do. It's an opportunity to point out that no matter how many times you read the document on the House floor, cite it in your bill, or how many copies you can stuff into your breast pocket without looking fat, the Constitution is always going to raise more questions than it answers and confound more readers than it comforts. And that isn't because any one American is too stupid to understand the Constitution. It's because the Constitution wasn't written to reflect the views of any one American.

The problem with the Tea Party's new Constitution fetish is that it's hopelessly selective. As Robert Parry notes, the folks who will be reading the Constitution aloud this week can't read the parts permitting slavery or prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment using only their inside voices, while shouting their support for the 10th Amendment. They don't get to support Madison and renounce Jefferson,then claim to be restoring the vision of "the Framers." Either the Founders got it right the first time they calibrated the balance of power between the federal government and the states, or they got it so wrong that we need to pass a "Repeal Amendment" to fix it. And unless Tea Party Republicans are willing to stand proud and announce that they adore and revere the whole Constitution as written, except for the First, 14, 16th, and 17th amendments, which totally blow, they should admit right now that they are in the same conundrum as everyone else: This document no more commands the specific policies they espouse than it commands the specific policies their opponents support.

The most recent offensive the right is taking up against the Constitution is birth right citizenship. The 14th Amendment clearly reads: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." Nevertheless, right-leaning state legislatures in three states want to strip citizenship from children born to illegal immigrants in this country. Too bad the Constitution, which they so dearly love, says these babies are citizens. According to the state legislatures, the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" means these babies do not have to become citizens. The Constitutional Law Prof Blog explains why their wrong in a fascinating article for us legal nerds:

They seem pretty confident in their interpretation, but there's good evidence against them. Start with the congressional debates over the Fourteenth Amendment--a debate eerily similar to that today. The debate in the 39th Congress focused on Chinese immigrants in California and Gypsies in Pennsylvania (among other groups), with opponents of birthright citizenship claiming that Chinese and Gypsies would take over those states. Opponents of birthright citizenship in the Amendment (obviously) lost that debate in the 39th Congress.

The article is definitely worth the 5 minutes it will take to read. It really underscores how the right will urinate all over the place claiming to own the Constitution and then at the same max volume (turn it up to 11) disclaim many of the parts that affect us most. This is why Charles Krauthammer's most recent column angered me and caused me to tell to Burnsy that it was "utter trash." But that's a column for another time.