Practice needed for confronting Oklahoma militia fans

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Tweety and Ed Schultz both screwed up interviews today about the call for an Oklahoma State Militia.

Tweety got sand-bagged by a guest who essentially denied all wing-nuttery and walked (briskly) away from his own comments. Even so, there were small openings remaining that tweety missed. Bad preparation re: the guest. It happens.

Ed Schultz had an actual elected official and was trying to really force the issue, as to whether this guy supported or opposed a proposed Oklahoma State Militia. Okay so far...

But there's nothing intrinsically controversial about a state militia. About half of states have one. What is controversial is that the tea-bagger call for an Oklahoma State Militia is to act as a check against the federal government.

Ed chewed on that angle for a while but the guy mostly got away using the same new-found faux-reasonablness as Tweety's guest.

But then there was a softball right over the plate that Ed just let pass.

The guest said that the Governor of Oklahoma will, and must, fight against unconstitutional laws pumped out of Washington. He went on and on and totally got away with it.

Reminder for the next time someone interviews this guy: When Congress or the President confront Oklahoma with an unconstitutional federal demand/rule/policy/obligation the Oklahoma state government does indeed have an obligation to the people of Oklahoma to resist the law.

Here's how that resistance works: Oklahoma goes to federal court and says, "hey, this law is F'ing unconstitutional." If the law places any actual burdens on the state Oklahoma would also be able seek an injunction to stop implementation of the law until its constitutional validity is established.

That injunction will or will not be granted. And either way the law in question will be determined to be constitutional or not by the federal courts.

And none of those steps involve civil disobedience (those procedures are as much or more so 'the law' as and law being discussed) and God knows none of those steps would be advanced or retarded by the existence of a state-fricking-militia.

Put another way... the Governor of the Great State of Oklahoma has no meaningful/decisive interpretive powers regarding the federal constitution.

So throughout the discussion "unconstitutional" was a term of art meaning "whatever I or some other bloviating tea-bagger believe to be unconstitutional"

Gotta call people on that stuff. The right question was, "Are you saying you need a state militia to resist supreme court decisions?" rather than to resist Obama and Pelosi.

(A particularly pointed point since the Supreme Court is the non-military arm of the tea-bag movement.)

The implicit context was the health-care mandate and it would have been useful to get the guy on record as to whether he was saying Oklahoma will defy that even after the Supreme Court says it is valid. I'm sure he would have tap-danced but it would have made for good TV at least.