Senator Robert C. Byrd has proposed a revolutionary amendment to the Constitution… to provide freedom of religion. I have to say, at first, I thought that maybe Byrd was just getting senile, and he forgot that we already had that amendment.

But, no, he remembers it:

“In my opinion, too many have not given equal weight to both of these clauses. Instead, they have focused only on the first clause, which prohibits the establishment of religion, at the expense of the second clause, which protects the right of Americans to worship as they please,’’ Byrd said in a speech to the Senate.

For everyone who knows me personally and has heard me talk about Senator Byrd, I have a startling announcement to make. If you’re standing up, you may want to sit down.

I agree with everything that Byrd said in that last paragraph. Heck, I even agree with everything he says in the one following it:

“It seems to me that any prohibition of voluntary prayer in school violates the right of our school children to practice freely their religion. And that’s just not right,’’ Byrd said.

The thing is, though, I can’t agree with his proposed amendment. If one accepts that the courts are already disregarding the Constitution in favor of their own opinions, then writing a new amendment that says, essentially, “…and we really mean it this time” is simply ludicrous. You want the freedom to worship in the Constitution? It’s already there.

How’s this for an amendment? How about we pass an amendment that says that the court, in considering whether or not something is Constitutional, has to go to the Constitution and its legal amendments, not to the Revised Constitution as written by the Supreme Court? Seriously, by ignoring what the Constitution says, and instead relying on what other people have said the Constitution says, it’s like the courts are playing a very slow motion game of “Telephone”.

Of course, Byrd can’t actually do that, because going to the Constitution and its legal amendments would mean overturning some of the legislation he’s supported (like the McCain-Feingold travesty) and it would seriously hurt his standing with the anti-gun crowd, since one of those legal amendments is the inconvenient-to-gun-grabbers Second Amendment.

Somehow, I can’t help feeling that Byrd’s primary motivation here has more to do with the pending election than with any real desire to respect the Constitution and the rights that it is supposed to guarantee for his constituents. Maybe I’m just a cynic.