TJMS: Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. Breaks Down The GOP's Reading Of The Constitution
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Roland Martin talks with Jesse Jackson Jr. about the reading of the Constitution during yesterday’s session of Congress. For the first time in history, the 112th Congresses began with the reading of the United States Constitution.
Congressmen Jackson explained that the expectation of the Black Caucus was that the Constitution would be read as the founding fathers wrote it and then the twenty-seven amendments would be read to “show a progression from a document written in 1787 to the very last amendment in 1992.” Jackson said, “What actually happened on the House floor was a reading of the Constitution with the amendments applied, therefore it struck all of the sections out of the Constitution like the three-fifths clause, like any mention of discrimination that was sanctioned under the Constitution and the nuances of that kind of discrimination.”
Congressman Jackson told Roland, “So you end up with a sanitized document. You end up with a new Republican majority basically saying ‘here we have a Constitution as it is, therefore all of the history that it took to get here is not important to the business that is in front of us.’”
Congressman Jackson also details how he believes House Republicans will use the Constitution to repeal health care reform, make President Obama look like he was not qualified to be president and how the GOP will argue the reasons why they are cutting certain programs.
