Lecturing Americans To ‘Reread’ Constitution, Herman Cain Confuses It With Declaration of Independence

By Ian Millhiser

During GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain’s campaign announcement on Saturday, the former pizza executive took a moment to lecture the country on its need to “reread the Constitution”:

CAIN: We don’t need to rewrite the Constitution of the United States of America, we need to reread the Constitution and enforce the Constitution. … And I know that there are some people that are not going to do that, so for the benefit of those who are not going to read it because they don’t want us to go by the Constitution, there’s a little section in there that talks about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

You know, those ideals that we live by, we believe in, your parents believed in, they instilled in you. When you get to the part about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” don’t stop there, keep reading.Cause that’s when it says “when any form of government becomes destructive of those ideals, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.” We’ve got some altering and some abolishing to do!

Watch it:

Cain really should have taken his own advice, however, before he decided to lecture the entire country about the Constitution. The phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” does not appear anywhere in the Constitution’s text. Nor does the Constitution include a phrase about the right of the people to alter or abolish a government that is destructive of their ideals. Both of those phrases appear in theDeclaration of Independence, which, in case Mr. Cain is not aware, is actually an entirely different document than the Constitution — written over ten years earlier.

Sadly, Cain’s Bachmannesque ignorance of the nation’s founding documents makes him well-suited to compete in a GOP presidential primary. Republicans invented anutterly meritless constitutional objection to the Affordable Care Act, they’ve called everything from Social Security to Medicare to child labor laws unconstitutional, and they’ve even pretended that the Constitution allows them to strip Americans of their citizenship. So Cain needs to look no further than his own party if he wants to find people who are more interested in rewriting the Constitution than in actually reading it

High School Sophomore Challenges Bachmann To Basic ‘Fact Test’ On U.S. Constitution

By Tanya Somanader 

In expounding upon the Constitution, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) rarely troubles with reading it. Her musings on the subject have earned her yet anotherPolitifact “pants on fire” award and ensured the employment of fact-checkers everywhere. Now, the Minnesota Independent reports that one American —a high school sophomore — wants to take the Congresswoman head on. Fed up with the “injustice” that Bachmann’s “politically expedient” inaccuracies serve to “women everywhere,” New Jersey 10th grader Amy Myers is challenging Bachmann to a public debate — or a basic “fact test” — on the Constitution:

As a typical high school student, I have found quite a few of your statements regarding The Constitution of the United States, the quality of public school education and general U.S. civics matters to be factually incorrect, inaccurately applied or grossly distorted.The frequency and scope of these comments prompted me to write this letter. [...]

Rep. Bachmann, the frequent inability you have shown to accurately and factually present even the most basic information about the United States led me to submit the follow challenge, pitting my public education against your advanced legal education:

I, Amy Myers, do hereby challenge Representative Michele Bachmann to a Public Forum Debate and/or Fact Test on The Constitution of the United States, United States History and United States Civics.

Bachmann does have a law degree, but given the knowledge she’s displayed on the subject, the 10th grader stacks up pretty well.

Michele Bachmann Calls For Stripping Judges’ Power To Enforce Parts Of The Constitution She Doesn’t Like

By Ian Millhiser

Republicans treat the Constitution like a toy that they can manipulate however they choose. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) claims that all federal education programs — including Pell Grants and student loan assistance — are unconstitutional. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) says that they are constitutional problems with the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) suggested that child labor laws, FEMA, food stamps, the FDA, Medicaid, income assistance for the poor, and even Medicare and Social Security violate the Constitution. And when the Ninth Circuit held that yes, the Constitution does have a First Amendment, Newt Gingrich’s political advocacy groupcalled for that court to be abolished.

With so many Republicans claiming that the Constitution can mean whatever they want it to mean, it should be no surprise that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) wants a piece of this action. Yesterday, Bachmann told a gathering of social conservatives in Iowa that if the courts insist on applying the Constitution’s requirement that no state may “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” to gay people, then Congress should strip federal judges of their power to hear marriage equality cases:

Something else that we can do to reinforce our pro-marriage, pro-life, pro-family agenda is to limit the subject-matter jurisdiction of the courts . … At the federal level with what are called Article III courts, Article III of the United States Constitution, we can limit the subject matter that justices can rule on. We have it within our authority to decide what judges can rule on and what they can’t. Any time the people speak, they say with one voice that marriage is one man, one woman.

Watch it:

Bachmann is, of course, wrong about the public’s view of marriage equality — 53 percent of Americans believe that gay couples should not be denied their constitutional right to marry. It is also not entirely clear that Congress actually has the power to prevent the Supreme Court from hearing a marriage equality case, although Congress could prevent lower federal courts from hearing these lawsuits.

At the end of the day, however, Bachmann’s court-stripping plan is nothing less than an assault on the Constitution itself. Bachmann does not like the fact that the Constitution requires gay people to be afforded the same legal protections as everyone else, so she wants to hamstring the courts from according equal protection to all Americans.