In the past, Christie joked with reporters that he would have to go to great lengths to put an end to those pesky questions about his candidacy for president or vice president.

“Apparently I actually have to commit suicide to convince people I’m not running,” he commented in February.

Chris Christie. Image via Walter Burns/Wikimedia Commons.

But recently, Christie dropped hints he would possibly consider an invite from Romney to be his running mate.

On Wednesday, polling data from Quinnipiac University showed that Christie as a GOP running mate wouldn’t be a factor in New Jersey for most voters in the November election.

New Jersey could be in play as a swing state if Christie could deliver it to Romney, but so far, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

“Christie gives no measurable boost to the Republican presidential effort in the Garden State as a ticket of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with Gov. Christie running for vice president trails President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden 50-42 percent,” Quinnipiac said in a press release.

The big reason: Voters in the Garden State can’t picture the blustery Christie as taking a second seat to anymore, including Romney.

Historically, the odds are really against Christie if he ran with Romney and then lost the general election.

The only recent losing vice presidential candidate to later win an election as president was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who ran an a virtual unknown in 1920 on the Democratic ticket. It took another 12 years for FDR to get elected as president.

Technically, James K. Polk was also a losing vice presidential candidate who won a general election four years later, because he received one electoral vote as vice president in 1840, in a different system used to pick candidates.

However, Polk was voted out of office in Tennessee in 1841 as governor–not a great omen for Christie, if he chose to run for the veep position and lost.

Scott Bomboy is the editor-in-chief of Constitution Daily.

Buchanan has long been the subject of rumors about his private life, but there isn’t concrete proof one way or another. (It doesn’t help that Buchanan was one of the most obscure of all the presidents.)

The personal lives of presidents have long been the source of speculation, exaggeration, and even fabrication.

Even before then, our nation had plenty of scandal fodder–thanks to the mystery and intrigue of some of the Founding Fathers.

Last year, The National Constitution Center’s Mark Kehres took us on a tour of the Signers’ Hall and lets us in on some personal facts about the men who framed the Constitution.

The reaction to the Newsweek cover was widespread and also led to a lot of attention to James Buchanan, who was in Google’s top 20 trends list for two days.

It turns out Newsweek had considered multiple covers with photo shopped images of President Obama with different same-sex marriage symbols.

As for Buchanan, aside from renewed speculation about his personal life, the renewed attention could focus more light on the president who preceded Abraham Lincoln.

Buchanan hasn’t received high grades from historians, but he did make key decisions that precipitated the Civil War.

For the past two days, most major news and political outlets, from Fox News to Politico, have focused on President Barack Obama’s decision to support same-sex marriages.

But Friday’s release of an AP-GfK poll on voters and the economy could take some of the focus off civil rights issues, and place it back on the economy, which is widely expected to be the centerpiece of the fall election campaign.

Most troubling for the Obama campaign is the trend that voters who call themselves Democrats are losing faith in the economy.

The percentage of voters who call themselves Democrats who believe the economy is “good” is down to 31 percent, from 48 percent just in February.

The poll was conducted recently, from May 3 to May 7, by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications.

Another key trend in the poll is the number of people who consider themselves Independent, or leaning toward being Independent.

The sample group was about 1,000 random respondents, and there was a bigger percentage of Independents (29 percent) than Republicans (22 percent) in the group. Only 31 percent of those polled considered themselves Democrats.

Obama’s Achilles’ heel, according to the poll, is still retail gasoline prices. Just 30 percent of those polled approved of President Obama in that area – a two-year low.

The past two single-term presidents to lose re-election bids were George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, and both struggled with the economy as an election issue.

To be sure, there were other factors that hurt Bush and Carter, but the Obama campaign is also surely watching the economic numbers, including surveys.

There was also a bump in the number of people who believe unemployment will go up – and not down – in the near future, from 30 percent in February to 35 percent in May.

Scott Bomboy is the editor-in-chief of Constitution Daily.

In a continuing series, Lyle Denniston provides responses based on the Constitution and its history to public statements about the meaning of the Constitution and what duties it imposes or rights it protects.

The statement at issue:

“We reject the notion that any discussion of these matters is to step onto a slippery slope that inevitably endangers our national security.  Too often, that fear can become an excuse for saying nothing at all – which creates a void that is then filled with myths and falsehoods….So let me say it as simply as I can.  Yes, in full accordance with the law—and in order to prevent terrorist attacks on the United States and to save American lives – the United States Government conducts targeted strikes against specific al-Qaeda terrorists, sometimes using remotely piloted aircraft, often referred to publicly as drones…These targeted strikes are legal.”

– John O. Brennan, President Obama’s assistant for counterterrorism, in a speech in Washington on April 30, discussing for the first time in public the justification for the program of “targeted killing” using unmanned drones against designated terrorist figures.

We checked the Constitution, and…

The Obama Administration obviously has authority under the Constitution to limit the disclosures it is willing to make about highly secret policies used to deal with terrorism threats.  But what is still lacking is a candid public discussion of the constitutional justification for one such policy: the use of “drones” to kill specific individuals designated by the government as direct threats to U.S. security but whom the U.S. has not been able to capture. (Capture, it appears, is the preferred approach, to help gather intelligence.)

One of President Obama’s key advisers on terrorism, John O. Brennan, made clear in his April 30 speech that the Administration is expanding a public campaign of what he called “transparency” about the use of drones.  In his widely publicized speech, Mr. Brennan offered an unusually candid portrayal of how those targeted individuals are chosen, and how the program is kept within what he insisted were very tight limits.

But missing from the speech was a detailed explanation of the White House official’s summary remarks that the drone policy was “in full accordance with the law” and that the strikes “are legal.”  In fact, that was the briefest part of his speech.

Here, in its entirety, is the legal explanation he gave: “As a matter of domestic law, the Constitution empowers the President to protect the nation from any imminent threat of attack.  The Authorization for the Use of Military Force – the AUMF – passed by Congress after the September 11^th attacks authorizes the president ‘to use all necessary and appropriate force’ against those nations, organizations and individuals responsible for 9/11.  There is nothing in the AUMF that restricts the use of military force against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.”  (Beyond domestic law, Mr. Brennan made a similarly brief reference to international law and the law of war.)

With no more than that, the April 30 speech would seem to have done little to fill a “void” about the President’s authority to carry on such a policy.   For example: how does the Constitution indicate what an “imminent threat of attack” would be, sufficient to justify the drones policy?  And, for another example, how does a drone policy qualify – in a legal sense – as “necessary and appropriate force”?  Further, which “individuals” can legally be targeted?  And, how can a president be held accountable for such a policy?

It has been rumored, for months, that there is at least one secret memorandum, written by Justice Department lawyers, that reportedly examines the Constitution, domestic law and other legal norms, and finds among them clear authority for the drones policy, even as it would apply to a U.S. citizen designated as the source of an “imminent” threat.  But Administration officials have only hinted that there is such a document, and they have steadfastly refused to release publicly any legal document that might bear upon the policy.

It seems quite plain that legal argument, by and of itself, is not a national security secret.  Any memorandum that made legal arguments could be gone over carefully by security classification experts, and then released in a redacted form, without sensitive data.  That is done several times a month, in fact, as the federal courts have reached decisions on whether to release foreign nationals from detention at Guantanamo Bay.  Sometimes, whole pages in court opinions are blacked out, and yet they still make sense in discussing legal concepts.

The Administration’s lawyers fought successfully in a federal court in Washington in 2010, using the doctrine of “state secrets,” to avoid having to make a legal defense of the drones policy when it was challenged by the father of the Yemeni cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki.  At the time of that failed lawsuit, Awlaki was said to be on the targeted list.  He was, in fact, killed by a drone strike in Yemen last September.

There remains, in public conversation, a good deal of uncertainty about the legality of the drones policy, and it may be that more “transparency” on that subject would not end the controversy.  However, it at least might steer the conversation toward a calmer legal discourse.

Lyle Denniston is the National Constitution Center’s Adviser on Constitutional Literacy. He has reported on the Supreme Court for 54 years, currently covering it for SCOTUSblog, an online clearinghouse of information about the Supreme Court’s work.

Related Constitution Check Stories

• Can the public get access to the legal reasons for targeted killing?
• Is the government’s targeted killing of a U.S. citizen unconstitutional?
• Is the constitutionality of the “war on terrorism” a settled issue?

Obama’s move and recent statements by Mitt Romney officially make the same-sex marriage issue a hot-button issue in the upcoming November election.

Romney told two TV stations in Denver on Wednesday that he opposes same-sex marriages or any civil unions that result in the same type of legal rights for same-sex couples.

In Congress, the Federal Marriage Amendment has been dormant since 2006, when it didn’t receive enough support to move forward in the House.

The proposed amendment reads as follows:

“SECTION 1. Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.”

In the past, Romney has said he supports the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment and he signed a pledge to do so last year. However, Romney has also said in the past he is in favor of gay rights.

And he told a Fox affiliate on Wednesday in Denver that he was in favor of other rights, just not marriage.

“Well, when these issues were raised in my state of Massachusetts, I indicated my view, which is I do not favor marriage between people of the same gender, and I do not favor civil unions if they are identical to marriage other than by name,” Romney told KDVR-TV. “My view is the domestic partnership benefits, hospital visitation rights, and the like are appropriate but that the others are not.”

The requirements for any amendment to make it out of Congress and to the 50 states for a vote are onerous.

The measure would require a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate, and then the approval of 38 states within seven years.

Scott Bomboy is the editor-in-chief of Constitution Daily.

The statement at issue:

“There is a principle much favored by all of America’s governments: It may parcel out certain economic liberties sparingly and only to those who can prove to government that the exercise of their liberty will satisfy some government-concocted criteria. That principle lacks constitutional warrant and repudiates the nation’s foundational philosophy…In 1938, the [Supreme] Court bowed to the progressive desire to empower government to allocate wealth and opportunity…The Court decided…that economic liberty should be assigned a status markedly inferior to that of ‘fundamental’ liberties.”

–Syndicated columnist George F. Will, in “Taking liberties with liberty,” published December 18 in the Washington Post, discussing a case in federal court in Washington State, Courtney v. Goltz, in which two small businessmen are seeking to break a company’s monopoly over providing ferry service on Lake Chelan in the Cascade Mountains.

We checked the Constitution, and…

Columnist Will was attacking one of the most durable ideas in constitutional history: that the Nation’s basic charter treats economic rights and opportunity less favorably than it does individual civil rights. His remarks fit well into a new wave of criticism of that doctrine, criticism that is part of the new anti-government sentiment often associated with the “Tea Party” movement. There may be almost no chance, however, that the Supreme Court would repudiate that doctrine any time soon.

Will, of course, was attacking the Court’s 1938 ruling in the case of U.S. v. Carolene Products, in which a majority of the Court upheld a federal law that barred the shipment in interstate commerce of “filled milk” – that is, skim milk with ingredients added to make it appear, misleadingly, more like whole milk. The particulars of that law are no longer of wide interest, but the ruling has a lasting feature – a footnote. Footnote 4 is widely considered to be the most consequential footnote ever dropped into a Supreme Court opinion.

The footnote played a key role in the overall objective of the Carolene Products opinion, which was to establish clearly the notion that laws regulating “ordinary commercial transactions” would survive constitutional challenge far more easily than other forms of legislation, especially laws that would restrict individual rights. A hierarchy of constitutional tests, used ever since, made clear that the easiest test to satisfy was the “rational basis test.”

Here is the way the opinion spelled out that low-level test: “Regulatory legislation affecting ordinary commercial transactions is not to be pronounced unconstitutional unless, in the light of the facts made known or generally assumed, it is of such a character as to preclude the assumption that it rests upon some rational basis within the knowledge and experience of the legislators.”

In short, unless a commercial law was wholly irrational, with no imaginable justification, it was “presumed” to be constitutional.

After reciting that test, the Court inserted Footnote 4. The full text of the note is too lengthy for this space, and it uses somewhat stilted language and is sprinkled with legal citations that slow down its reading. Its essence, though, is that the Court thereafter would not give a “presumption of constitutionality” to laws that would intrude upon such rights as the right to vote, freedoms of the press and political assembly, political and religious freedoms, or the rights of national or racial minorities. It said that “discrete and insular minorities” may need special protection, because of their lack of political power to influence government.

As columnist Will protested, economic liberties were left out of the preferred list.

It is fair to assume that no member of the current Court would publicly advocate abandonment of the preferred status of individual rights or the lesser protection of economic liberties; the Court regularly applies only a rationality test to economic legislation. And, of course, even if a lower court were tempted to back away from that hierarchy, it has no authority to do so as long as Footnote 4 has validity in the highest court.

Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that the lawyers pressing the case over ferry service in Lake Chelan have made no mention – at least so far – of a desire to overrule the Carolene Products decision. They are relying instead mainly upon claims that navigable waters, under the Constitution, should be open to competitive enterprise. And the state is replying that no one has a constitutional right to operate a ferry, competitively or otherwise.

Lyle Denniston is the National Constitution Center’s Adviser on Constitutional Literacy. He has reported on the Supreme Court for 53 years, currently covering it for SCOTUSblog, an online clearing house of information about the Supreme Court’s work.

Pennsylvania is first in:

• rural population
• number of licensed hunters
• state game lands
• covered bridges
• potato chip production
• pretzel bakeries
• meat packing plants
• mushroom production
• sausage production
• scrapple production

Did you know that Pennsylvania is home to:

• The first hospital – Pennsylvania Hospital was founded in 1751 by Dr. Thomas Bond and Benjamin Franklin “to care for the sick-poor and insane who were wandering the streets of Philadelphia.”
• The first volunteer fire department – Under Benjamin Franklin’s leadership the Union Fire Company was founded on December 7, 1736. 
• The first baseball stadium – In 1909 the first baseball stadium was built in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 
• The first zoo – The Philadelphia Zoo opened on July 1, 1874. 
• The first presidential residence–Philadelphia served as one of the nation’s many capitals during the Revolutionary War, and served as the temporary national capital while Washington, D.C. was under construction from 1790 to 1800.
• The frst all motion-picture theater- The first theater devoted to showing motion pictures was the Nickelodeon which opened on June 19, 1905 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
• The first superhighway – The Pennsylvania Turnpike was officially opened on October 1, 1940. It was the first high-speed, multilane superhighway design and was financed through revenue bonds.
• The first commercial radio broadcast -KDKA radio in Pittsburgh produced the first commercial radio broadcast.
• The first Little League Baseball World Series was held in 1946 in Williamsport, PA
• The first museum devoted exclusively to the Constitution – National Constitution Center opened on July 4, 2003.

Beth Specker is Director of Civic Education at the National Constitution Center and served as Chief of Staff to the Hon. Marjorie O. Rendell, when she was First Lady of Pennsylvania.

As you can imagine, Thanksgiving is a big deal for us! We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, researching, and thinking some more about what really happened in the autumn of 1621. The truth is, there’s a lot that we don’t know. We only have one eyewitness account that comes from a letter written by colonist Edward Winslow to a friend. That letter was published in London in 1623 in a book now known as Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. There are no known Wampanoag oral traditions about the event.

By Alfred Rudolph via Wikimedia Commons

Here’s what Winslow writes…

…our harvest being gotten in, our Governour sent foure men on fowling, that so we might after a more speciall manner rejoyce together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labours; they foure in one day killed as much fowle, as with a little helpe beside, served the Company almost a weeke, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Armes, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest King Massasoyt, with some nintie men, whom for three dayes we entertained and feasted and they went our and killed five Deere, which they brought to the Plantation and bestwed on our Governour, and upon the Captaine, and others. And although it be not always so plentifull, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodnesse of God, we are so farre from want,  that we often wish you partakers of our plentie.

Winslow’s account tells us that the intent was to rejoice after the harvest, it lasted three days, there was fowl and deer to eat, Massasoit and 90 warriors (amongst others) attended, the Wampanoag went out and killed 5 deer, there were recreations which included shooting muskets, and they entertained and feasted the Wampanoag.

Important questions like these can change how we view the First Thanksgiving.

But what doesn’t it tell us? I want to know what else they ate, what were the “other recreations”, did the Wampanoag and Pilgrim children play, and where did the Wampanoag sleep? But what I REALLY want to know is whether the Wampanoag were actually invited to the event. If you go back and read the letter you may be surprised. To me, it sounds like the colonists could have been having their own celebration and the Wampanoag arrived. Maybe the Wampanoag were drawn by the unusual amount of gunfire? Or maybe Massasoit was visiting in the area on diplomatic business? What if the Wampanoag went out and killed the five deer because there wasn’t enough food for the over 90 unexpected guests (there were only about 50 colonists)?

Important questions like these can change how we view the First Thanksgiving. After all, how many of us grew up thinking that the whole reason for the First Thanksgiving was for the Pilgrims to thank the Wampanoag for their help in surviving their difficult first year?

What do you think really happened at the First Thanksgiving? To find out more, visit our Plimoth Plantation website www.plimoth.org. There you’ll find Thanksgiving resources, articles, and videos. Children can launch their own investigation in our online activity You are the Historian: Investigating the First Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving!

Kim VanWormer is the Director of Education and Public Programs at Plimoth Plantation.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Editor’s Note: For the past 200-plus years, we the people have had a lot to say about the Constitution. In each installment of “Say What?” we offer a quick quote–be it wise, quirky, or otherwise memorable–from past or present conversation related to our favorite founding document.

 

Quote

“The judges of the supreme court of the United States have the power of determining the constitutionality of laws.”

Who said it

Noah Webster, in the entry for “constitutionality” in his American Dictionary of the English Language

The story

Webster, a contemporary and colleague of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and other Founding Fathers, envisioned a uniquely American culture; to achieve this, he sought to create a uniquely American vocabulary. With his seminal dictionary, Webster ingrained words like “constitutionality” into the language–and the consciousness–of Americans. (We also have Webster to thank for dropping the “u” in words like “honour” and “neighbour”.)

Holly Munson works in Public Programs at the National Constitution Center.