Limbaugh smears Obama with misrepresentation of co

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Limbaugh smears Obama with misrepresentation of comments on Constitution.

http://mediamatters.org/authors/media-matters-staff/70

You're in good company with the fat man, HOT. Neither of you knows your way around facts, context and evidence.

Looks like a number of people agreed with Obama. If you'd ever actually read the Constitution, you would understand what Obama and these people were talking about.

But Obama's identification of a fundamental flaw reflected in the Constitution and "continu[ing] to this day" is hardly unique; several influential Republicans, including President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have articulated a similar view:

•At a July 19 event at the Council on Foreign Relations, Rice said: "In our first Constitution, my ancestors were three-fifths of a man. What does that say about American democracy at its outset? I've said it's a great birth defect. And we have had to overcome a birth defect. And, like any birth defect, it continues to have an impact on us. It's why we have such a hard time talking about race, and dealing with race."

•During a July 10, 2003, interview on CNN's Larry King Live, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said: "It took us a while to recognize that we could not live our Constitution truly unless we eliminated slavery, and hundreds of thousands of young men fought a civil war to end slavery and then it took us a long time to get rid of the vestiges of slavery and we're still working on it to this very day."

•In July 8, 2003, remarks made at Goree Island in Senegal, Bush said that the "moral vision" of abolitionists "caused Americans to examine our hearts, to correct our Constitution, and to teach our children the dignity and equality of every person of every race." He added: "The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation. And many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the bitter experience of other times."

Additionally, in an August 5, 2006, interview with C-SPAN's Brian Lamb, Chief Justice John Roberts said of the authors of the Constitution: "They never worked out what to do about slavery and just kind of shuttled that aside and decided we're not going to talk about that. And that taint in the Constitution, took a Civil War to remove." Later in the interview, he said that the Constitution's amendment process "did allow some fundamental flaws to be addressed like slavery -- abolished in the Thirteenth Amendment."

Limbaugh also falsely asserted that during a separate 2001 interview Obama did with WBEZ, Obama said that "if he can come up for a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts, he would do it." Obama actually said that while he could likely develop a legal theory for making economic changes through the courts, he did not think it would work "as a practical matter."

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