On Tuesday, the US Senate introduced an amendment to the Constitution that would define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. (Full Story.) Thankfully, for the rest of dumb America, NewsMax.com does not give the full text of the amendment nor a link to it, proving once again that we are not smart enough to analyze primary sources for ourselves, and we should just let our favorite conservative op-ed outlets tell us what we should think about this. At least someone here is sane: "'The U.S. Constitution is no place to play election-year politics, particularly when our nation is facing other critical issues such as an uncertain economy, threats to our homeland, the safety of our troops in Iraq and skyrocketing health care costs,' said HRC Executive Director Elizabeth Birch in a press release." Good for you, Elizabeth Birch! The Constitution is not a place for unilateral issues that are the pet issues of a particular group in this country.

NewsMax gives its own opinion of the amendment: "But supporters of traditional marriage say a constitutional amendment is the only way to protect the institution of marriage from courts that go beyond their constitutional mandates." Go beyond their mandates? What?! The courts of the United States, ever since Marbury v. Madison, have been given the power to review decisions of the states or of lower courts. Strangely, when the Supreme Court used this very methodology in Bush v. Gore to stop the recount process in Florida, the Republicans were curiously quiet on the issue of going "beyond their constitutional mandates." And yet, when the courts rule in a manner that they disagree with, suddenly, the judiciary is "activist" and "re-writing the law."

Article III of the U.S. Constitution, which establishes a federal court system, says, "The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;-- between a State and Citizens of another State;--between Citizens of different States;--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects."

Chief Justice John Marshall, in Marbury v. Madison, writes, "The constitution is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it. If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the constitution is not law: if the latter part be true, then written constitutions are absurd attempts, on the part of the people, to limit a power in its own nature illimitable. [. . .] It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each. So if a law be in opposition to the constitution; if both the law and the constitution apply to a particular case, so that the court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the constitution; or conformably to the constitution, disregarding the law; the court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is of the very essence of judicial duty."

For two hundred years, the foundation of our judicial system has been the ability of the judiciary to uphold the superiority of the Constitution. For an outlet so mediocre as NewsMax.com to declare that that tenet is wrong simply because it allows the judiciary to do something it happens to personally disagree with shows a resounding lack of understanding about what the Constitution means. "The Constitution should only be used to expand individual rights, not to single out a group of Americans for discrimination, Birch added."