So you're basically taking a big dump all over Dan Savage's heroes who heckled Obama about DADT? Even after their heckling worked and DADT was repealed? Post hoc ergo propter hoc, Mr. Constant.

Dan's going to fire you now I bet.

"Enjoy jail, idiot."

Jail, followed by a gig with Fox News...

The insane asylum is being run by the psychopaths.

This country has completely lost its shit.

There are nuts out there.

ACtually, they are not reading the Constitution.

They are reading "the modern, abridged constitution" --- This will prevent lawmakers from having to recite politically uncomfortable portions, notably the provisions on the “three-fifths compromise” under which slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of taxation and representation.”

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/136313…
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Birthers don't call it slavery, @6.

It's called "being a Servant".

Remember, Truth only exists when they say it exists.

Will she even spend the night in jail?

@1: I can't seem to find any references to DADT hecklers disrupting a session of Congress. Can you post a link?

I doubt there was that much thought involved in her decision to go batshit today: more like, "I don't feel like taking my Haldol this morning."

Even though this woman is crazy and her argument is couched in nothing but obvious racism, I dislike that a protester gets arrested for speaking her mind.

What if they were reading off plans to start another illegal war? Someone should have the right to speak up.

So they're reading the Constitution out loud, eh? Am I the only one who wonders which member of the House Republican Caucus was assigned to read the three-fifths clause?

What @6 said. This is a complete sham. It's easy to fetishize the founders when you ignore the fact that they institutionalized slavery and screwed up the union so badly that we had the bloodiest war in our history less than 100 years after the ink dried on the Constitution. This is what you get when you believe that the name Glenn Beck should be associated with the words "professor" and "history."

@12:

One of the first things visitors to the House or Senate chambers are cautioned against is disrupting the proceedings, and explicitly that ANY disruption will result in your being immediately removed from the visitors' gallery and detained by Capitol Police.

So, you know, it's not like she wasn't warned ahead of time...

@15:

Not to mention the fact they'd already so royally screwed things up under the Articles of Confederation that they had to have a do-over with the Constitution.

@13: They didn't read any part of the constitution that has since been amended.

kk @15: Your "the founders were all bad guys" narrative is exactly as credible as the "the founders were all good guys" narrative that you seem to think you're discrediting.

Racism makes people do crazy things.

@18: But I thought they were all about ORIGINAL INTENT! DAMMIT!

Fun fact: ol' Patrick Henry HATED the Constitution and argued strenuously against its ratification.

fnarf is correct. in fact, he said 'i smell a rat'. of course that could be attributed to the building.

She'll probably be the next teabagger nominee for president.

Mike @19: I didn't say that the founders were all good or all bad. I said it's easy to fetishize them (as teabaggers are wont to do, e.g., by deleting references to the "icky" parts of the Constitution when reading it on the House floor) when you ignore their mistakes, which include: (1) institutionalizing slavery and (2) screwing up the union such that we had a horifically bloody civil war less than 100 years later--not exactly what they were aiming for in "a more perfect union." Perhaps you think the founders didn't (1) institutionalize slavery or (2) screw up the union in a way that led to civil war. Discuss?

That was all scripted. The guy with the gavel read the warning; he didn't just speak it.

well obama isn't a born citizen, hes an illegal immigrant. we all know that, it's not like it's news or anything.

FACT: Barack Hussein Obama has not proved his eligibility to be POTUS.

@28: Also, Dan Savage hos not proved that is is not, in fact, Mel Toume.

Mods, can you do something about "ERIC CARTMAN", "THE ERIC CARTMAN", "THE MIGHTY ERIC CARTMAN", and such? It's not the constant trolling I object to, it's the fact that it's such pitifully weak sauce. I've seen better trolling out of Will in Seattle.

My hatred for these psychos is getting deeper. for what they're upset about and for what they're not upset about. How is it that so many of these crazy Obama haters and teabaggers are women?!

To believe Obama wasn't born in the States means you must believe in a conspiracy that took place long, long ago to make Obama president since before his birth (Hawaii newspaper announced his birth when he was born in '61), and that the feds are in on it, because look, THE FEDS SCREEN YOUR ASS FOR ANY HIGH LEVEL GOVERNMENT JOB BEFORE YOU GET IT. If Obama didn't have a valid birth certificate it would be one of the first things they'd notice to bar him from even running for office. These scumbag birther people, or anyone with a jr. high-level education realize this, no?
And you think the 9/11 truther people are out there, Mr. Constant? These birther teabagger folks take the cake, sorry. It's truly astonishing that so many (over half of all republicans according to recent poll) doubt that Obama was born in the States, because of what else they must believe in order to reach that doubt. Such a deep, decades-long conspiracy for nothing more than a wall street-friendly wussy democratic administration that is only making some lame-ass moderates in the middle happy. I'm fucking sure. Fuck these people

kk @19: I think that referring to "the founders" in the collective, as the Tea Party founder fetishists do and as you did above, leads to exactly these sorts of problems. It leads to the sort of sloppy thinking that suggests that there was "original intent" and that the founders all agreed on everything and that everything they did was a decision they arrived at instantaneously.

Perhaps you think the founders didn't (1) institutionalize slavery or (2) screw up the union in a way that led to civil war. Discuss?

Sure. I think that without (1) institutionalizing slavery, there (2) wouldn't have been a union to screw up. That was certainly the widely held belief among the participants at the time, and I haven't seen a compelling case otherwise. You're writing like you think there was some kind of approach that would have been both better and possible. I don't think there was, unless you're talking about the regions going their separate ways.

What's more, your "screw up the union" phrase makes it sound like the union existed before "the founders" arrived like keystone cops, bumbling their way around with the tools of state, clumsily fucking up what could have been a shining beacon of equality and fairness. They didn't "screw up" the union, they forged it out of whole cloth. Compromises were necessary to get it done. Some of them are ugly to us (and were ugly to many of the founders), but the prospect of disunion was uglier still to them.

Categorizing the three fifths compromise as "a mistake" ignores the context, within which that mistake was necessary to create the nation.