Remember getting Christmas gift cards that said you had been entered in the “Cheese of the Month,” “Wine of the Month” or “Fruit of the Month” club. Every month you would get a new cheese, bottle of wine or fruit crate.
The wacko Conservative Right, fueled by talk radio superstars like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, has Amendment of the Month. Last April, it was the Ninth Amendment. A Tea Party rallies on Tax Day (April 15), people were told that we needed to uphold the Ninth Amendment because it, according to the Prophet Beck, returned power to the states.
Five days later, the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded killing 11 men and spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The Republican governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida forgot about states’ rights and began demanding help from the federal government.
Now the Amendment of the Month is the Fourteenth Amendment and it’s being used by the wacko Right to push their immigration agenda.
The irony—and there always is irony when dealing with the Tea Party and other Conservative wackos— is the 14th Amendment is one of the Reconstruction amendments intended to deal with the old Confederacy.
From Wikipedia:
Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which held that blacks could not be citizens of the United States.
Its Due Process Clause prohibits state and local governments from depriving people (individual and corporate) of life, liberty, or property without certain steps being taken. This clause has been used to make most of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states, as well as to recognize substantive rights and procedural rights.
Its Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people within its jurisdiction. This clause later became the basis for Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court decision which precipitated the dismantling of racial segregation in the United States.
The impact of this amendment would be later subverted in the South by the Jim Crow laws and it would take the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s to end segregation.
The wackos want to undermine the Constitution and this Amendment. The Constitution is the document that they supposedly hold sacred….except when it is against their agenda.
What is their fear?—and let’s make it clear, fear is what drives this vocal fringe.
Babies.
The 14th amendment grants citizenship to babies born here to illegal immigrants. How horrible! Babies! The federal agency that collects U.S. birth data recorded about 7,000 babies born to nonresident aliens in 2006, the most recent data available. Hardly an epidemic.
Pushed the radical Right, Republicans have called for hearings on the amendment, to make sure illegal immigrants aren’t using their babies to plant roots in the U.S. House Minority leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) weighed in on the debate over the birthright citizenship provision of the 14th Amendment Sunday.
Babies….really?
The Republican leadership is lost.