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Jun 2, 2025

A Constitutional Primer for Kristi Noem

It’s All About Interpretation, Am I (Far) Right?

By Ed Goldman

When Kristi Noem, the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security and Photo Ops, was recently asked to define “habeas corpus,” everyone was impressed by her swift and adorably wrong response. 

While we’d already learned that this administration prizes neither accuracy nor a working knowledge of our Constitution, it hit me that what Noem and so many of us need is an update of the terminology to be found in our most cherished document.

Edgy Cartoon

The Jeffersons?

We begin… .

  • President Donald Trump’s own ill-informed remarks about America’s most sacred manifesto will now be known as the “pre-ramble to the Constitution.”
  • The film industry will adapt some language from that document as well, declaring, “All X-Men are created sequel.”
  • Since the expression “a more perfect union” has always been a grammatical embarrassment—something’s either perfect or less than perfect but never more perfect—the term will henceforth and forevermore be “perfecter.”
  • To be mindful of pronouns in transition, “We the People”—among the more famous opening words in the English language (right up there with “I want to see the manager” and “Your Tinder profile said you were 6’3”)—will now be “Us the non-binary.”
  • “Pro tempore” will now mean to be in favor of a popular breaded coating for Japanese food.
  • Hard-working hearse drivers will complain to their labor union that people who die from massive obesity are the “habeas corpses” to lift onto a gurney.
  • Xanax-infused wedding cakes will be designated as the only proven way “to insure domestic tranquility.” 
  • “Ex post facto,” which has always meant “After the fact,” has been updated to describe a nasty secret one reveals about a former lover on Instagram.
  • The current Third Amendment stresses that “No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house.” Well, excuse me but anyone trying to “quarter” a soldier in my house is going to have to go through me first. What a disgusting proposition! What were those Founding Fatheads thinking? And who quarters someone without first drawing him?
  • Meanwhile, we see trouble ahead for the Fifth Amendment, which mandates that nobody should “be subject for the same offence (sic) to be twice put in jeopardy… .” Well, what if they happened to have won on “Jeopardy” the night before? Are we saying that the guy or gal couldn’t appear on the next show as the defending champion? And was that guy or gal all that “offencive” (sick!)? And why didn’t the framers of the Constitution hire a better proofreader? Was there a quill and ink shortage, along with the tea (the latter, self-imposed)?
  • While we realize the Constitution was written in a more conservatively-clad era, surely the guys in the writing room would’ve noticed on those hot and humid days of May-September 1787 that they were drowning in their own perspiration. So of course they wanted the right to bare arms. A rumor that refuses to die has Ben Franklin showing up to work wearing flip- flops.
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  • Since the term “due process” shows up in not just one but two U.S. Constitution Amendments (the fifth and 14th, if you’re playing along with the home version of The Goldman State), we think this might be the time for both a reality and spell check. It was supposed to be either “do” process or “dew” process. The first was meant to mandate similar hair styles for the drafters of the amendments (“Long and tied back in a pony tail to convey perkiness even as we age out”), the second to covey that America was being designed as a nation of early risers—or as a monograph at the time was titled, “No Country For Old Night Owls.”
  • Finally, as you know, the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment is meant to protect us from “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Well, the searches are one thing; seizures are quite another. How can the government protect me from having seizures? And didn’t Kristi Noem shoot one of her dogs because it was having a seizure?

Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).