Do Republicans hate the Constitution or What? Big Problem for N. Carolina Conservatives.

I say big trouble because as N. Carolina’s Republican legislature claims the First Amendment doesn’t apply to states, you have to wonder if they thought about the Citizens United case, where money is free speech and corporations are people…my friend.

It’s just one more thing to add to our firearm free-for-all, Michigan’s emergency manager law, voter suppression, gerrymandering, politicizing the judicial branch with “fair” conservative judges, laws protecting businesses from “the people,” denying the right of health care but believing in the death penalty while protecting a fertilized egg,  and threatening an armed takeover of the U.S. government.

Talk about unpatriotic uncertainty, here's the latest as reported by legal scholar and professor Jonathan Turley:

Republican N. Carolina state legislators have proposed a bill that would allow the state to establish a state religion and further declares the state exempt from the Constitution and court rulings. What is astonishing is that eleven GOP members are pushing the law, which rejects not just the core principles of our country but would move the state closer to the model of government currently ripping Egypt and other nations apart in mixing religion and government. The main sponsors, state Reps. Carl Ford and Harry Warren, seem to have little more judgment than they do knowledge of our Constitutional system. Obviously, the law is facially unconstitutional but it is the contempt for our separation of church and state that is truly unnerving in these members.

This is part of a belief that the First Amendment only applies to the federal government. Under this theory, the rights of free speech, free press, assembly, and religion can be denied by states. Notably, North Carolina’s Constitution still prohibits people who do not believe in God from taking public office. The bill reads as follows:

SECTION 1. The North Carolina General Assembly asserts that the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from making laws respecting an establishment of religion. SECTION 2. The North Carolina General Assembly does not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public schools, or any political subdivisions of the State from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.