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August 13, 2010

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Brendan cites an article in Salon that's worth a closer look. The article refers to "a 'Daily Show' montage on efforts to repeal the 14th Amendment." The Daily Show piece isn't the only one recently to attack those who want to repeal the 14th Amendment. In The Progressive, David Love writes about "[t]he call by some conservative lawmakers to repeal the 14th Amendment . . . ." In the Huffington Post, we learn that "[o]n Sunday, Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) became the highest-ranking Republican to suggest support for the repeal of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution." Ditto Wonkette. Ditto the Colbert Report's interview (starting around 5:00) with a Yale Law professor.

There's only one problem with all this heated concern about Republican efforts to repeal the 14th Amendment. It's a lie. No Republican has proposed repealing the 14th Amendment. There has been discussion about changing the portion of the 14th Amendment that confers birthright citizenship, but that's not a repeal of the 14th Amendment. It wouldn't change the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. It wouldn't change the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Those are the two clauses on which a plethora of rights have been based. Changing birthright citizenship would leave those rights completely unaffected--not just for citizens, but even for illegal immigrants and their children.

Treating the discussion about birthright citizenship as an attempt to repeal the 14th Amendment is a fairly obvious attempt to mislead the public and obscure the issue, much like the effort to tar anyone who's opposed to illegal immigation as being anti-immigration. Brendan's been vigilant about how essential it is that media debunk any claim that the health care law could lead to death panels. One hopes he'll be equally outraged about the misleading talk about repeal of the 14th Amendment and that he'll demand that media debunk any such assertion. He could start with the Salon article he cites, which refers to the Daily Show segment about repeal of the 14th Amendment but fails in any way to debunk that lie.

Leave it to Brendan Nyhan to suck all the fun out of football.

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