Delaware Has an Easy Senate Vote

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The residents of Delaware now have a very easy decision to make regarding their Senator this year; their Democratic candidate, Chris Coons. In a recent debate held before an audience of law students (remember this, it’s important), his opponent, Republican Christine O’Donnell, failed to the third degree. I’m not all that knowledgeable about politics, but there are a few things that I do know about that I would expect elected officials to have at least a rudimentary understanding of.

The exchange came in a debate before an audience of legal scholars and law students at Widener University Law School, as O'Donnell criticized Democratic nominee Chris Coons' position that teaching creationism in public school would violate the First Amendment by promoting religious doctrine.

I really don’t get what’s to criticize here. He’s absolutely correct, and he made the same point about Intelligent Design when O’Donnell brought it up and attempted to assert that it is a completely different entity. It’s not. We all know that Intelligent Design is just creationism in disguise.

Furthermore, before that:

"Talk about imposing your beliefs on the local schools," she said. "You've just proved how little you know not just about constitutional law but about the theory of evolution. Because the theory of evolution is not a fact, it is indeed a theory.”

This woman owes me a new irony meter. Secondly, how many times have we all seen “evolution’s not a fact, it’s a theory”? Once more, with feeling… in the scientific community, the two terms are indistinguishable. Evolution is a fact and a theory. I won’t explain that here, it’s done on TalkOrigins.

Coons countered correctly again by mentioning the separation of church and state. O’Donnell’s counterpoint? This little gem.

When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O'Donnell asked: "You're telling me that's in the First Amendment?" (emphasis mine)

If you watch the video, the audience audibly titters. I’m sure many of them proceeded to facepalm. I certainly did. Let’s face it… there are a lot of political and legal debates out there about our Constitution and what it says, but I was under the impression that everyone understands the whole “freedom of religion” thing as well as our Establishment Clause in our First Amendment.  Everyone, it seems, except for fundamentalist Christians and right-wing pundits who assert that because the phrase doesn’t appear in the Constitution, we should throw out the principle entirely. Well, guess what? “Thou shalt not kill” isn’t anywhere in the document, either. I’m-a go get my gun.

But what’s even more troubling is that O’Donnell actually seemed perplexed by this. She seemed genuinely ignorant of the fact that the principle behind the separation of church and state is derived from our First Amendment. A little further into the video clip, O’Donnell actually had to be reminded about what some of the Amendments were and whether she supported them.

No surprise to me is that she’s a Teabaggin’ Party favorite. This is the best of what they have to offer, folks. These people are so outraged at what they are currently seeing in public office, that I guess they’ve decided to see what happens when they bring the whole system crashing down.