“Christine O’Donnell’s church and state gaffe makes voters laugh,” opines the Guardian , proving once more that a “gaffe” involves telling an unwelcome truth.
“Where in the Constitution is separation of church and state?,” O’Donnell asks. The answer? It ain’t there. The First Amendment, passed after the Constitution was adopted by a Congress elected under that ratified Constitution, reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Meanwhile, “established religions” were flourishing in several states, and so were multiple prohibitions thereof. In no way does the Constitution or the Bill of Rights establish a “wall of separation” between church and state.
Of particular note, John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, supported a law in his native New York that prohibited Catholics from holding public office there. As I recall, the law was on the books until 1820.
Since 1789, activist courts have delighted in finding all sorts of “constitutional” principles that are not in the Constitution. Delaware’s voters, apparently impoverished by thirty years of Joe Biden – who freely admits that he barely made it through law school — roll their eyes the way John McCain rolled his when Ron Paul suffered from gaffe addiction (read: truth-telling) in the 2008 GOP primaries. Whatever her faults — which O’Donnell freely admits, while the young McCain girl, a spoiled-rotten unaccomplished child of unearned privilege, mocks her — whatever her faults, she’s right on this one.
Naturally, I will cheer her on over the smug Marxist Coons. Country’ll grow.
5:06 pm on October 19, 2010
