O'Donnell Declares Herself Constitutional Scholar

I was reading through a transcript this morning of CNN's Anderson 360. In it Anderson Cooper is reporting on Republican Christine O'Donnell's latest Sarah Palin moment when she asks her opponent where in the Constitution is the Separation of Church & State.  What stuck out at me is how many times O'Donnell makes reference to her 7-day fellowship at a conservative think-tank, which she continually refers to as a graduate fellowship in constitutional government.

From the transcript:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What responsibilities or experiences in jobs and past -- past activities do you feel qualify you to be a senator?

O'DONNELL: Well, for one, I have a graduate fellowship from the Claremont Institute in constitutional government.

She's lying, continuously.

Again Cooper points out another instance where she claims graduate study of the constitution.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ok.

O'DONNELL: I also have a graduate fellowship in constitutional government from the Claremont Institute. It is the Constitution that I will defend and it is by the Constitution by -- that I will make all of my decisions.

Cooper rightfully makes note that the graduate study she keeps referring to was not at a university but a non-accredited Republican think tank and it lasted a whopping 7-days.  You cannot get "deep analysis of the Constitution" in a 7-day workshop from a Republican think tank.  In the real world it just doesn't work that way.  That explains why she did not know where the Separation of Church & State was located in the Constitution.

Also, keep in mind, when O'Donnell was attending her week-long in-depth study of the Constitution at a Republican think tank, she had not even completed her bachelor's degree yet.

As an undergraduate I had a full year of course work in Constitutional Law.   That's way more "analysis" of the Constitution than her Republican crash course at Claremont.  And I in no way would ever consider myself having the analytical capacity to run for U.S. senate bragging about my constitutional skills.  Not for Republicans, though.  All you have to do is attend one of their think tank workshops and you get to tell everyone you have a graduate fellowship in Constitutional Law.

*Update:

O'Donnell declared on ABC News this morning that she had won the debate about the First Amendment.  She claims she was giving high-fives to her staff after it was over in celebration of demonstrating her deep knowledge of the Constitution.

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?'"

Whether or not the exact phrase "separation of church & state" is explicitly mentioned in the First Amendment or not is pointless. Nor did she ask where the phrase was located. She asked where the concept was located. And it is located in the First Amendment.

Here's what tea baggers and Republicans are doing. A large number of them believe that unless it's directly written in text on the document of the Constitution that it's an invented power created by liberal activist judges.  The health care debate is a perfect example.  They believe unless the constitution explicitly states that Congress can require health coverage for all Americans then it is not a power granted to Congress; therefore Democratic health care reform is unconstitutional.  Never mind the fact that the Constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to regulate commerce and to provide for the general welfare of the country.