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Constitutional Scholar Obama Questions Legality Of Slavery Ban (Ann Coulter: Bright Nerd Alert)
Ann Coulter.com ^ | 8/20/2008 | Ann Coulter

Posted on 08/20/2008 3:44:34 PM PDT by goldstategop

This week, Barack Obama's challenge is to select a running mate who's young, hip, and whose accomplishments in life don't overshadow Obama's. Allow me to suggest Kevin Federline.

The only thing we can be sure of is that Obama will choose someone who is the polar opposite of all his advisers until now. In other words, it will be a very, very white male who was probably proud of his country even before being chosen as Obama's running mate.

Obama's got a lot of ground to make up following that performance last weekend at the Saddleback presidential forum with pastor Rick Warren.

After seeing Obama defend infanticide with the glib excuse that the question of when life begins is above his "pay-grade," Rev. Jeremiah Wright announced that although he's known Obama for 30 years, he only recently became aware of how extreme the senator's viewpoints were. Wright, after all, has his reputation to consider.

Network heads responded by dashing off an urgent memo: During the main presidential debates this fall, ask NO questions about abortion, ethics or evil! Morality isn't the Democrats' forte.

Obama's defenders spin his abominable performance in the Saddleback forum by saying he's just too smart to give a straight answer. As Rick Warren charitably described Obama's debate performance: "He likes to nuance things ... He's a constitutional attorney." The constitutional lawyer "does nuance," as Bill Maher said on "Larry King Live," "and you saw how well that goes over with the Rick Warren people."

If that's Obama's excuse, he ought to know a few basics about the Constitution.

Did the big constitutional lawyer whose "nuance" is too sophisticated for Rick Warren's audience see the letter his wife sent out on his behalf in 2004? Michelle Obama denounced a federal law banning partial-birth abortion, writing that "this ban on a legitimate medical procedure is clearly unconstitutional." Clearly!

The Supreme Court later found the law not "unconstitutional," but "constitutional" -- which I believe may have been the precise moment when Michelle Obama realized just how ashamed she had always been of her country.

But most stunningly, when Warren asked Obama if he supported a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman, Obama said he did not "because historically -- because historically, we have not defined marriage in our Constitution."

I don't care if you support a marriage amendment or not. That answer is literally the stupidest thing I've ever heard anyone say. If marriage were already defined in the Constitution, we wouldn't need an amendment, no?

Say, you know what else was "historically" not defined in the Constitution? Slavery. The words "slavery" and "slave" do not appear once in the original Constitution. The framers correctly thought it would sully the freedom-enshrining document to acknowledge the repellent practice. (Much like abortion!)

But in 1865, the 13th Amendment banned slavery throughout the land, in the first constitutional phrase ever to mention "slavery": "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

On Obama's "historical" argument, they shouldn't have passed the 13th Amendment because the Constitution "historically" had not mentioned slavery.

Do we know for a fact Barack Obama has read the Constitution? Obama's Facebook profile: "I'm pro-infanticide, I love sunsets, and I don't get the 13th Amendment!"

This is the guy who thinks he can condescend to Clarence Thomas? Asked at the Saddleback forum which Supreme Court justice Obama would not have nominated, Obama said ... the black one!

In Obama's defense, he said he thought Thomas wasn't experienced enough "at the time." So I guess Obama thinks Thomas should have to "wait his turn."

By contrast, Obama has experience pouring out of those big ears of his. Asked last year by Robin Roberts on ABC's "Good Morning America" about his lack of experience in foreign policy, Obama took umbrage.

Swelling up his puny little chest, Obama said: "Well, actually, my experience in foreign policy is probably more diverse than most others in the field. I'm somebody who has actually lived overseas, somebody who has studied overseas. I majored in international relations."

He actually cited his undergraduate major as a qualification to be President.

But on Saturday night, Obama said he didn't think Clarence Thomas was a "strong enough jurist or legal thinker" to be put on the Supreme Court.

I bet Thomas has heard of the 13th Amendment!


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; Philosophy; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 13thamendment; 2008election; anncoulter; brightnerd; clarencethomas; constitutionallaw; coulter; liberalism; marriage; moralabsolutes; nuance; obama; saddlebackcivilforum; slavery
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Obama: the bright nerd! But what a nerd!

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

1 posted on 08/20/2008 3:53:03 PM PDT by goldstategop
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Comment #2 Removed by Moderator

To: goldstategop

ObamaCarter is an empty suit with a glass jaw.


3 posted on 08/20/2008 3:56:54 PM PDT by Rosemont ($4+ for gas. Can we drill now?)
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To: Rosemont

Someone on the Howie Carr show said he was a stuffed shirt in an empty suit. :)


4 posted on 08/20/2008 3:58:29 PM PDT by pipecorp
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To: goldstategop
THE AUDACITY OF TRUTH ABOUT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA
5 posted on 08/20/2008 3:58:55 PM PDT by Jeff Head (Freedom is not free...never has been, never will be. (www.dragonsfuryseries.com))
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To: goldstategop

Wow. It would be fun to watch Ann debate Obama.


6 posted on 08/20/2008 4:00:53 PM PDT by Spokane
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To: goldstategop
I don't care if you support a marriage amendment or not. That answer is literally the stupidest thing I've ever heard anyone say. If marriage were already defined in the Constitution, we wouldn't need an amendment, no?

Great column! Thanks for posting it.

7 posted on 08/20/2008 4:04:30 PM PDT by syriacus (They often call me BARRY, but my real name is MISTER SCHMOOZE. [by B.O. + the Faddish Hacks])
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To: goldstategop

Ann hits in on the head here.

“Technically speaking” Obama’s performance was not “bad” at all. If he was up against Hillary it would undoubtedly been a draw, with all marveling at their polemical dexterity and issue-dodging dexterity.

The problem was that John wasn’t playing the same game. He was doing “straight talk” whiles Barry was doing “nuance.” Unfortunately, nuance vs. straight talk is like scissors vs. rock. It was glaringly obvious that Obama was out to bamboozle us by telling us as little as possible through Clinton-speak and legalese. The “above my pay grade” line was the absolute worst of the evening. He outright refused to answer the question. And he wants to be president? By showing us how good he is at pulling the wool over our eyes?

I’m afraid these times are just too dangerous for us to afford to elect another Clinton or Carter. Pooty the Punk may yet think back to the timing of his Georgia invasion as the mistake of his career. The one thing reassuring about him is the knowledge that (unlike Ahmedinajad) he doesn’t want to get nuked any more than we do.


8 posted on 08/20/2008 4:04:41 PM PDT by sinanju
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To: goldstategop
As I posted elsewhere, according to Senator Obama's presumptuous analysis of Justice Thomas's "legal mind" and abilities, one can assume he would not think much of Thomas Jefferson either. Jefferson's conclusion that the Constitution would "bind them down from mischief" would most certainly preclude Far Left judges from the kind of "mischief" Obama's kind of judges love. At least, Justice Thomas's "legal mind" understands Jefferson and the other Founders.

As I posted on another thread, some conservative group or individual needs to publish some of Justice Thomas's well-reasoned dissenting opinions, such as that in the Kelo case. Such an undertaking might enlighten voters who never see the dissenting opinions and have been "dumbed down" like Obama by their educational training.

The final paragraph of the Kelo opinion demonstrates clearly why Senator Obama and the far left in America fear a Supreme Court justice who looks to the "intent" or "meaning" of the Founders for guidance in decisions like Kelo. After all, that's what Thomas Jefferson advised, when he said: "On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it conform to the probable one in which it was passed." (1823)

Here is the final paragraph of Justice Thomas's opinion:

"The Court relies almost exclusively on this Court’s prior cases to derive today’s far-reaching, and dangerous, result. See ante, at 8—12. But the principles this Court should employ to dispose of this case are found in the Public Use Clause itself, not in Justice Peckham’s high opinion of reclamation laws, see supra, at 11. When faced with a clash of constitutional principle and a line of unreasoned cases wholly divorced from the text, history, and structure of our founding document, we should not hesitate to resolve the tension in favor of the Constitution’s original meaning. For the reasons I have given, and for the reasons given in Justice O’Connor’s dissent, the conflict of principle raised by this boundless use of the eminent domain power should be resolved in petitioners’ favor. I would reverse the judgment of the Connecticut Supreme Court." - Justice Clarence Thomas (Source: Cornell University web site)

To use a phrase the Left often employs, "most Americans," I believe, would find Justice Thomas's "legal mind" to be in accord with that of the genius Jefferson--not with that of the liberal justices and Senator Obama!

9 posted on 08/20/2008 4:05:21 PM PDT by loveliberty2
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To: Spokane
It would be fun to watch Ann debate Obama.

It'd be fun to watch anybody debate Hussein. I just hope that McCain gets to borrow a little from R.Regean with a line that might go something like this:

"Well, I wasn't going to say anything about your ears, but when it comes to dealing with foreign adversaries, it's a little 'wet' back there."

10 posted on 08/20/2008 4:10:44 PM PDT by budwiesest (Liberals aren't just dumb. They are devoid of reality and any common sense.)
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To: goldstategop

The way it’s written and Obama’s response means that slavery is still legal because the Constitution doesn’t mention it ...it also doesn’t mention not adding gasoline to milk either but we don’t do it .....


11 posted on 08/20/2008 4:10:58 PM PDT by SkyDancer ("What Our Enemies Couldn't Do To Us Our Liberal Democrat Politicians Will")
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To: goldstategop
What a T.U.R.D.!


12 posted on 08/20/2008 4:11:49 PM PDT by Yosemitest (It's simple, fight or die.)
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To: Rosemont

“ObamaCarter is an empty suit with a glass jaw.”

I think that’s a glassass.


13 posted on 08/20/2008 4:13:43 PM PDT by hdstmf
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To: goldstategop
Not wanting to put the word "slave" in the Constitution, the Constitutonal Convention delegates in the late 1780's agreed the Constitution would state that population would be determined by counting the number of "free Persons . . . plus three-fifths of all other Persons . . ." Of course, if one is an "other person" rather than a free person, obviously the "other person" must be "not free"; in other words, a slave.

It's an interesting concept, though: the idea that a human being could count as 3/5 of a person. Maybe Obama would want to apply his great constitutional mind to the task of determining what percent of a person a baby might be: 1/3 before birth, 2/3 upon passage through the birth canal, 3/3 upon issuance of a Social Security number?

Bingo! Then perhaps non-citizens wouldn't be "persons" either? Could we then classify the unborn and the newborn as simply "undocumented immigrants" of a sort? But only if the unborn, the newborn and the undocumented immigrants could be killed ad libitum and added to the municipal landfill -- forget "due process of law."

Disposing of unwanted individuals swiftly and brutally seems to much easier when their "person" status isn't quite in order.

How's that for a Jim-Dandy legacy of slavery?

And then there's this really nifty juridical concept developed by brilliant German legal minds, the Untermensch: from unter, “under, below” + Mensch, “person, human”. That had wonderful practical applications, as well.

All one has to do is to separate the concept "human" from the concept "person." A trick Obama has already mastered.


(Sigh.) [sarc/]
14 posted on 08/20/2008 4:14:42 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o ("The first duty of intelligent men of our day is the restatement of the obvious. " - George Orwell)
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To: Yosemitest

“Rookie” made me laugh! Thanks! :D


15 posted on 08/20/2008 4:20:42 PM PDT by 668 - Neighbor of the Beast (My spiritual advisor is a lawyer.)
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To: toddlintown

This monkey is reduced to screeching and throwing its own bodily filth.


16 posted on 08/20/2008 4:24:04 PM PDT by libstripper
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To: toddlintown
I think the Warren discussion proves the jig is up for at least one candidate.

In Barack Obama's America, you would be placed in a re-education camp for using that kind language, Honky.

17 posted on 08/20/2008 4:25:57 PM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets (His Negritude has made his negritude the central theme of this campaign)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

IIRC, the purpose of the three-fifths clause was to minimize southern slaveowning states’ inflating the size of their Congressional districts by counting persons deprived of their rights to participate or vote (i.e., slaves).

The three-fifths clause did not question anybody’s humanity.


18 posted on 08/20/2008 4:28:04 PM PDT by elcid1970 (My cartridges are dipped in pig grease)
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To: Spokane
I would pay serious money for a front row seat if that event were ever a reality. Of course Barry (No Peace be upon his unmentionable middle name) Obama would never, ever agree to such a debate, even when he has lots-o-time on his hands in the new year...

So many excellent lines in this piece but this one is priceless: "Swelling up his puny little chest, Obama said: "Well, actually, my experience in foreign policy is probably more diverse than most others in the field. I'm somebody who has actually lived overseas, somebody who has studied overseas. I majored in international relations.""

19 posted on 08/20/2008 4:28:31 PM PDT by Prov1322 (Enjoy my wife's incredible artwork at www.watercolorARTwork.com! (This space no longer for rent))
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To: goldstategop

He is the ONE !!! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL ...............


20 posted on 08/20/2008 4:30:59 PM PDT by Deetes (God Bless the Troops .)
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