Did Laura Ingraham take an idiot pill this morning?

The whole show so far this morning (first 90 minutes) have been nothing but idiocy from Ingraham. The two points that have sent me writing are 1) the living constitution, and 2) her strident theocracy.

1) Ingraham mocks the idea that the Constitution needs to be interpreted according to contemporary standards. I have a libertarian friend who takes this position, but also has the kind of beliefs on other issues that support his view of the Constitution. He holds that the Constitution does not permit redistributive social welfare, or indeed social welfare of any kind, including social security. It does not permit regulation of drugs, or of the characteristics of products in general. He rejects innovations that began to happen immediatly, in the founding generation (Marbury v. Madison, for instance), not to mention much of the wartime coordination which was implimented in the Civil War, WWI, and WII, to say nothing of the Patriot Act. While my libertarian friend believes it would be good policy to go back to the very original intent of the Federal power, he is under no illusion that there is any public support for such a move. Ingraham wants to talk the talk of a founding document, but its clear she would not scale Federal power back to an eighteenth century context. Indeed, at the moment she's praising FCC fines of broadcasters. Give me liberty or give me death? Not if it offends, apparently. Ingraham would very probabaly favor a very radical shift of power from the states, but not in the form which a literal, historicist reading of the Constitution would provide. Upon what basis then does she argue that we should retain those powers not innumerated in the Constitution.

2) Ingraham had a Seperation of Church and State guy on, and from Ingraham's statements, either the secularists get to impose their views on the majority, or the majority of believers get to impose their religion on the minority. Indeed when her guest argued that the very purpose of the Constitution's Bill of Rights was to protect the minority against the tyranny of the majority, she mocked the idea. "Where does it say that?" She must be so completely unaware of the writings of James Madison, that the name itself must be unfamiliar to her. I've blogged at leangth about this (here), so I'll just say that there may be a solution in which no body does any imposing somewhere in between the them or us position of Ms Ingraham.