Oh, and Dick, there are other parts to the Constitution.
UPDATE: Ah, he’s a Free State whacko.
UPDATE: Found a pic
UPDATE: Feeling ornery, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Concord Monitor:
In his editorial dated February 20, 2008 entitled "Legally, A Woman Can’t be Elected President", former NH legislator Dick Marple makes a bold argument: that the 19th Amendment, which brought about women’s sufferage, "did not identify women to be qualified to become elected president."
He’s quite correct. To that I would add, the Second Amendment (the "right to bear arms") also does not grant woman the qualification to become president. Trust me, I looked. I read it closely — it just ain’t there.
In fact, carefully scrutiny of the entire U.S. Constitution reveals the same result: nowhere does it specifically say that women are qualified to be President.
True — Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution gives a few requirements for presidential office: the "person" must be a U.S. citizen (or a natural born citizen), must be 35 or older, etc. But nowhere does it specifically say that a *woman* can be President.
Clearly, the Supreme Court will have to resolve whether or not a woman qualifies as a "person", but until they rule on this thorny legal question, I advise caution.
I was going to write a tongue-in-cheek, smart-ass "Letter To The Editor" in response to Mr. Marple’s commentary, but then it dawned on me: there’s nothing in the Constitution which permits me to do so. (The "free speech" clause of the First Amendment gets me close, but since it doesn’t specifically permit me to write a Letter to the Editor to the Concord Monitor, I guess am out of luck).
Still, here I am, writing.
Please don’t turn me in.
I don’t expect it to be published, but it was fun to write.