On The Late Show last night, Stephen Colbert was doing his usual slice-'em-so-they-don't-know-they've-been-diced interview with a Republican, in this case nattering, nasal-voiced, Cubo-Canadian Texan, conservadouche Ted Cruz, who happens to be running for president. Talking about same-sex marriage, Colbert challenged Cruz on whether or not marriage-defining should be left to the states. Cruz said, as he often does when a Supreme Court decision goes against his dickish beliefs, "I don't think we should entrust governing our society to five unelected lawyers in Washington."
Cruz knows better. He has to know better. He clerked for Justice William Rehnquist, under whose leadership the Supreme Court invalidated dozens of state and federal laws, you know, the kind passed by elected legislators.
But apparently Cruz, like most of the Republican candidates, doesn't give a shit what's actually in the Constitution. They are living with some fantasy Constitution, one that apparently is merely toilet paper to whatever political whims some jack-off GOPer can come up with. 'Cause, see, Article 2, Section 2 of the real Constitution is pretty goddamn clear: The President "shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate,
shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of
the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose
appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be
established by law."
That right there means that it isn't some crazy notion that "unelected" lawyers (or, more precisely, judges) make the decisions on the laws. In fact, Article 3 of the real Constitution specifically empowers the Supreme Court to do that. If you have a problem with the Supreme Court being unelected and deciding the constitutionality of laws, then you have a problem with the very thing you proclaim you'll protect. And this shit's in the Articles, not in the bonus Amendments.
We've had Donald Trump, Chris Christie, and Rand Paul want to shitcan the 14th Amendment to end birthright citizenship because of all the Mexican babies clogging up the playgrounds or something. We've had Ben Carson seeming to not understand that there is an Article 6 that specifically prohibits a religious test in order to hold any office in government anywhere in the United States. At what point will Lindsey Graham want to suspend the 3rd Amendment so that Marines can forcibly quarter themselves at his home ("Ya'll go ahead and use mah showah. I'll just stand heah and watch you a-scrubbin' your loins and pecs")? The candidates then say that they want to appoint to the court an "originalist" who doesn't view the Constitution as adaptable to the times, like Antonin Scalia, who, by the way, is an unelected judge.
This is not even getting into the right's high, hard love for the 10th Amendment above just about everything else in the Constitution. Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and Bobby Jindal are all 10th Amendment in your face about same sex marriage or Common Core or whatever the federal government does that they think sucks. Jeb Bush got himself into trouble with gun nuts because he said to Stephen Colbert that the 10th Amendment gave states the right to regulate the 2nd Amendment, something he quickly backtracked on because, hell, nobody says anything even vaguely sane about the completely misinterpreted 2nd Amendment and survives the GOP primary.
And yet, time and again, these candidates will proclaim that President Obama has destroyed or shit on or wiped his taint sweat with the Constitution. Yet their own words show, time and again, that, at best, they don't actually understand what's in it. At worst, except for the 2nd and 10th Amendments and the ability to use the military, they actually, actively hate it.
(The Rude Pundit believes in a living Constitution. Amend that bad girl. Get money out of elections. Revisit the 2nd Amendment.)
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