Light reading: Why is reciting the Constitution controversial?

On Thursday, members of the House’s new Republican majority read the U.S. Constitution aloud — the first time in the nation’s history that’s been done during a session of Congress.

If skeptics wish to snort that this is a mere dog-and-pony show — that before the month is out members of this same GOP majority will doubtless vote to allocate money for many purposes not specifically authorized in the founding document — let them have at it.

But the venomous response from some on the left went way beyond that.

“Do you think this Constitution-loving is getting out of hand?” Joy Behar asked liberal radio host Bill Press on her TV show Tuesday. “Is it the first time a lot of congressmen will have heard about it, er, read it?”

“There could be some benefit here,” Mr. Press replied, “because I think most Republicans haven’t read the Constitution, to be honest. I hope they listen carefully. There’s some good stuff in there about the right of privacy they probably never heard before”

Actually, the Constitution mentions no “right of privacy,” though such a right can certainly be inferred from the Ninth Amendment, as can many other unspecified rights.

The Fourth Amendment does ban warrantless searches — perhaps Mr. Press means he hopes the new GOP majority will rule the Transportation Security Administration unconstitutional. It could be a fruitful discussion. Mr. Press and Ms. Behar did agree the Constitution states only the Congress can declare war, in which they are correct.

“Given their position that torture as national policy is just fine, (Republicans) might want to skip over the part prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment,” said Dahlia Lithwick, contributing editor at Newsweek and senior editor at Slate, who was a regular guest on “The Al Franken Show.”

Really? While both Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama have failed to please the ACLU when it comes to interrogation of foreign spies and saboteurs caught out of uniform trying to kill Americans, we don’t recall many tea party rallies crying out for more torture of convicts.

The underlying theme of such carping, of course, is that the Constitution is so vague and out of date that we’d do better to simply ignore it — which has been doctrine for progressives at least since the days of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Problem is, that approach has given us unsustainable debt and deficits, while burdening us with a meddling nanny-police state that erodes our freedoms and increasingly saddles us with a dependent class that doesn’t know how to respond to any problem except by demanding that government fix it — hardly an approach well-suited to a free and independent people.

“The Framers were no more interested in binding future Americans to a set of divinely inspired commandments than any of us would wish to be bound by them,” Ms. Lithwick concludes.

“Commandments” to bind the people? Certainly not. But a straitjacket for those who enjoy seeing government powers expanded without limit?

Yes. That was the whole idea. And all this condescension, all these patronizing snickers, would seem to reveal some nervousness on the left that the people are indeed starting to go back and read it — and understand it.