O'Donnell: Constitution Separates Church, State?

Delaware Tea Partier doesn't know the First Amendment
By Nick McMaster,  Newser Staff
Suggested by AustinFound
Posted Oct 19, 2010 1:42 PM CDT

Christine O'Donnell apparently doesn't subscribe to the view that the Constitution guarantees the separation of church and state, CBS News reports. "Where in the Constitution is (that)?" she asked Senate candidate Chris Coons during a debate over whether schools should be allowed to teach intelligent design. It prompted laughs from the crowd, a group of students at Delaware's Widener School of Law. (Sharron Angle has voiced a similar sentiment, notes the Plum Line blog of the Washington Post.)

Coons described creationism as a "religious doctrine" and said the First Amendment forbade teaching it in schools. "The First Amendment does?" O'Donnell asked. "Let me just clarify: You're telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?" Coons responded from memory, "Government shall make no establishment of religion." (He was close, notes CBS; it's actually "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.") "That's in the First Amendment...?" O'Donnell responded.
(More Christine O'Donnell stories.)

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