Sarah, please study the Constitution

Either Sarah Palin is woefully ignorant of the Constitution and has a basic misunderstanding of our civil liberties, or else she once again is "just saying things" to rile up fear and hatred in her equally ignorant base.

The latest example is her saying, in a radio interview, that her criticisms of Barak Obama for his past associations with Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright are not negative attacks, and she's being unfairly and dangerously accused of it. "If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations, then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."

How do they do it? What do Republicans put in their children's pablum? How do they learn so thoroughly that: if I do it, it is my God-given, Constitutional right; but if you do it, you're threatening my God-given, Constitutional right?

Salon's Glenn Greenwad explains why this argument is frighteningly wrong:

If anything, Palin has this exactly backwards, since one thing that the First Amendment does actually guarantee is a free press. Thus, when the press criticizes a political candidate and a Governor such as Palin, that is a classic example of First Amendment rights being exercised, not abridged.

This isn't only about profound ignorance regarding our basic liberties, though it is obviously that. Palin is also giving voice here to the standard right-wing grievance instinct: that it's inherently unfair when they're criticized. And now, apparently, it's even unconstitutional.

According to Palin, what the Founders intended with the First Amendment was that political candidates for the most powerful offices in the country and Governors of states would be free to say whatever they want without being criticized in the newspapers. The First Amendment was meant to ensure that powerful political officials would not be "attacked" in the papers. Is it even possible to imagine more breathtaking ignorance from someone holding high office and running for even higher office?

I think their flawed thinking is even more basic. They simply do not distinguish criticism and censorship. Nobody is unplugging her microphone -- but that's what she wants to do to the press. No one is telling Sarah Palin she doesn't have the right to lie about Obama's associations. By the same token, the press has every right -- in fact, the duty -- to say her statements are untrue, misleading, defamatory, and possibly even inciting to violence.

Obama's "associations?" Palin probably doesn't know of the Supreme Court's long-established precedent that the First Amendment's phrase "right of the people peaceably to assemble" includes "freedom of association." She might not want to go too far down that road anyway, given that her husband has been a member of a political party that advocates rebellion against the United States, a party to whom she has also sent a Governor's warm welcome video for their convention.

So, dear uneducated, prejudiced, arrogant Sarah, please study the Constitution before you run for president in 2012. Your ignorance is appalling.

Ralph