Greg Sargent at The Plum Line reports on a lovely piece straight out of the Minitrue RecDep. A shadowy conservative group called the 60 Plus Association is sending out mailers warning Virginians that they may soon end up in an "Obamaville" if they don't vote out the Democrat, Rep. Gerry Connolly. Connolly, they point out, supported the dreaded stimulus.
Greg Sargent:
What's particularly interesting about this mailer is that the "Hooverville," of course, was a symbol of government inaction in the face of the poverty and widespread misery of the Great Depression. But the 60 Plus Association, which is devoted to free enterprise and less taxation, is warning that "Obamavilles" will result if we don't roll back government.
What's the other big issue for the 60 Plus Association, you ask? They want the extension of the Bush tax cuts on the top 2% ... presumably so the Koch brothers don't have to join a bread line.
A quick update on one of the more amusing stories of the week. Talking Points Memo and ABC News report the latest spin from Christine O'Donnell after her belly flop on con law on Tuesday.
"It's really funny the way that the media reports things," O'Donnell told ABC News this morning. "After that debate my team and I we were literally high fiving each other thinking that we had exposed he doesn't know the First Amendment, and then when we read the reports that said the opposite we were all like 'what?'"
O'Donnell told ABC News "her line of questioning to Coons was not because she didn't know the First Amendment, but to the make the point the phrase 'separation of church and state' does not appear anywhere in the Constitution." (As ABC's Jon Karl and Gregory Simmons point out in their report, "the Supreme Court has interpreted the First Amendment's declaration that Congress 'shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion' as a legal separation between government and faith.")
Based on our earlier discussion on Library Grape, this line of defense isn't at all surprising, but reviewing the video again I never hear her actually say "where is the phrase separation of church and state." A reminder of what she actually said:
Coons quotes the language of the establishment clause and O'Donnell sits there smugly, saying nothing while the audience gasps and chuckles at her. They discuss it further and at no point does she articulate this abstruse conservative argument that "the phrase" separation of church and state isn't present so it's not valid to interpret it that way, regardless of Thomas Jefferson's Danbury letter explaining the intent of the clause and two hundred years of legal precedent -- no, she demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge, period. No points awarded.
Speaking of this narrow argument from the right regarding the establishment clause, Steve Benen makes some excellent points:
One can obviously read the Constitution and see that the literal phrase "separation of church and state" isn't there, but a basic understanding of history and the law makes clear that the phrase is a shorthand to describe what the First Amendment does -- it separates church from state.
Indeed, a variety of constitutional principles we all know and recognize aren't literally referenced in the text. Americans' "right to a fair trial" is well understood, but the exact phrase isn't in the Constitution. "Separation of powers" is a basic principle of the U.S. Constitution, but it isn't mentioned, either. More to the point, you can look for the phrase "freedom of religion" in the First Amendment, but those three words also don't appear.
Ultimately, if you're relying on extremist candidates and right-wing media personalities for constitutional scholarship, you're going to be deeply confused.
