The Walkerville Weekly Reader

National Desk: Hard-hitting journalism from your completely un-biased (pinky swear!) reporters in Walkerville, VA.

Walkerville, VA
Monday, March 25, 2024
Carolyn Purcell, Editor

Republicans clamor for “Constitution”

Democrats decry archaic, post-slavery document. Republicans threaten to cite obscure document in all new legislation.

Republicans angered Democrats today by inserting the “constitution of the United States of America” into the law-making process. According to experts consulted by the Reader, the document is 100 years old.

“It’s written in an old-timey vulgar tongue,” said well-known liberal blogger Ezra Klein. “It doesn’t belong in modern elite legislation.”

Another conservative, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, claimed that the constitution “does not require discrimination on the basis of sex”. Democrats and journalists leapt to defend the public from Mr. Scalia’s misguided views of the U.S. constitution, and called it a pattern of Republican misinformation about the document.

“They don’t even think women are slaves,” said Ann Woolner. “And yet every Democrat knows it is their natural state. Everything we do is about letting them and everyone know their place in society—supporting Democrats. If it’s not in this constitution thing, well, it should be.”

Indeed, Republicans skipped sections of the constitution that they claim no longer apply, such as those involving slavery, “angering some Democrats”. “They claim that Republicans ‘amended’ the constitution to end slavery,” said one Democrat, “but we know that there is no means of amendment. The constitution changes only through the close scrutiny of what the document means between the lines. This task can only be performed by Democrats.”

That’s really what’s wrong with the Republican reading of the constitution, said other scholars. “They only read the words. They didn’t read the modern interpretation of the spaces between those words.”

Dahlia Lithwick of Slate agreed, calling it a “fetishization of words.” Dana Milbank said that by including amendments, the Republicans made a mockery of the “living constitution”. Amendments, according to Milbank, are far inferior to interpreting the constitution as a living document that changes according to how those in power want to read it. Lithwick added, “Not all your piety nor wit shall amend it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears amend a word of it.”

Alex Altman of TIME agreed. “One reason why the fetishizing of the Constitution is unsettling is that too often, the Constitution is wielded as if it were some supreme law, even if, as Garrett Epps wrote this week at the Atlantic, even lawyers fail to grasp the document’s finer points.”

Atlantic writers protested the reading Thursday morning by loudly accusing President Sarah Palin of faking the birth of her daughter’s child. Mr. Epps was escorted from the building by Republican guards. Democrats accused Republicans of paying only lip-service to the first amendment’s freedom of speech.

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