Palin's Constitution

Not long ago, Gov. Sarah Palin's answer to the question of what the Vice President's job is led some to raise questions about her grasp of the U.S. Constitution. To be fair, Sen. Joe Biden had some difficulty keeping straight which article covered the Executive Branch, and VP Cheney has mystified many Americans with his unique reading of the VP's job.

Now Palin has moved into another section of the Constitution, the First Amendment, and she brings a mavericky eye to it as well. ABC News' Steven Portnoy reports:

In a conservative radio interview that aired in Washington, D.C. Friday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by 'attacks' from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama.

Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama's associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.

'If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,' Palin told host Chris Plante, 'then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.'

Now I'll admit that I'm not a Constitutional scholar either, but my understanding is that the First Amendment prohibits governmental restrictions on citizens' speech and on that of the press. Gov. Palin, however, seems to think that it would protect candidates (and government officials) from the press criticizing them for what they say. Or perhaps she retained enough of high school civics to know that what she is saying is nonsensical legally, but figures it will work for her politically. Ignorant of our fundamental document? Disingenuous enough to spout nonsense in the hopes of swaying those who are ignorant? Those seem to be the options to me. Neither one seems like a good answer regarding someone running for national office.