Guy Who Wants to be President Doesn’t Understand the Constitution

“Dred Scot is still the law of the land,” said Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee today, demonstrating his complete lack of understanding of the Constitution he wants to uphold.

Seriously, I had to check to make sure this wasn’t from the Onion when I read it.huck

The Dred Scott case, for those unaware, was the 1857 case which held that blacks, free or slave, could never be American citizens. One of the top five worst Supreme Court decisions ever (probably even the worst), it helped send us off to the Civil War.

Huckabee’s point was that no one follows that decision any more, so therefore we don’t have to follow the gay marriage decision.

Anyone who has taken a basic government class (or even just basic history) in High School can tell you that the 14th Amendment nullified the Dred Scott decision. The reason no one follows that decision is because it hasn’t been the law for 150 years or so.

Let me remind you once again: This guy wants to be President. He wants to take an oath to follow a Constitution that he clearly does not understand.

Then again, this is the same way these guys treat the Bible — they apparently have never read that either, but they strongly believe it says only what they want it to say and no more.

Editorial cartoon: Huckabee was right; it’s exactly like that

We should be able to discriminate because religion

The photographer who refused to provide service to a gay wedding because it went against his religious beliefs lost again, this time with an appeal to the Supreme Court.

This has some religious people quite upset, because they believe — try to follow this logic — that laws that prevent cruelty to and discrimination against other human beings violates their rights.  Their right to deny rights to others.

I know, right?

The law in that particular state prohibited this exact kind of discrimination, so the photographer thought that there should be an exemption for those who disagree with the law.  You know, in the same way that there are exceptions in other laws that allow you to disobey them if you don’t like them.  In the same way some religious folks were able to ignore laws that struck down interracial marriage back in the ’60s.

Oh, right, I remember now.  That never happened.

Republican leader Mike Huckabee thinks this decision is just terrible.  After all, the Bible is against this and our laws should do whatever the Bible says.  Which means that not only should we be stoning gays to death, we should also bring back slavery.

As Huckabee stated, “unless God re-writes it, edits it, sends it down with His signature on it, it’s not my book to change.” I wonder how many gays Huckabee stoned to death this week?

Here in this place called the United States, we have a Constitution in which the Founding Fathers said, in the very first amendment, that our government would not promote a religion in any way (the “establishment clause.”)  There are other parts of the Constitution that prohibit any sort of religious test be given to anyone in our government, too.

Is it all that surprising that people like Mike Huckabee pick and choose what parts of the Constitution they think should apply to them in the same way they do with the Bible?