The 14th Amendment IS part of the Constitution, Mr. Verney

This morning, I received an email from the Bob Barr campaign. In it, the Campaign Manager, Russell Verney, showed a complete lack of understanding of the Constitution. It's my opinion that Bob Barr himself does not have this same lack of understanding, but if he lets his staff continue to put out this 19th-Century nonsense, the voting public's perception may be that he agrees with them.

From the email:

[Barack Obama] has publicly stated his disdain for justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.

Me too. Same for most Libertarians. These four men have made excuses for the worst attacks on the Constitution by this President. The Bob Barr who donates his time to the ACLU doesn't think much of these four men, either.

The email continues:

We don't believe in a living Constitution. We believe that where interpretation is needed, original intent is what should be considered. The Constitution of 1789 is as good today as it was then.

You have got to be kidding me. There's no way that Bob Barr agrees with this nonsense. The 1789 Constitution, complete with a definition of slaves as 3/5 of a person is "as good today as it was then"? Libertarians don't believe anything of the sort.

You see, the phrase "original intent," which is one of Ron Paul's favorites, is really just code for "I don't like the Fourteenth Amendment, so I'm going to pretend that it's not part of the Constitution." Ditto for the phrase "states rights." The Fourteenth Amendment has been a part of the Constitution for a very long time now. To ignore it is to be in a 19th-Century timewarp.

But here's the kicker:

Your gift of any amount will help us get the word out that there is not a dime's worth of difference between McCain and Obama.

And if Russell Verney has his way, there won't be a dime's worth of difference between Paul, Baldwin, and Barr. The Libertarian Party is not a place for apologists of the Confederacy. Those folks have a home -- the Constitution Party.

Slavery was wrong. Individual states infringing on the liberty of individuals based on immutable characteristics such as race, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity, is wrong. That's why the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified and why Libertarians support the Fourteenth Amendment -- to guarantee every American, in every state, equal protection under the law.

Mr. Barr needs to give Mr. Verney a lesson on the Constitution, and he needs to publicly refute statements from his staff that deny the existence of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.