It’s been tried before — in 2005, when the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress — and it failed to come anywhere near the required two-thirds majority. What makes Cain — or anyone else — think that such an amendment has a prayer of getting two-thirds?

Cain is an even bigger fool for calling for such an amendment, for he’s clearly forgotten, as an African-American, that there was an attempt a century ago by racist members of Congress, mostly Southerners, to pass a constitutional amendment to outlaw interracial marriages.

That attempt — spurred by controversy over the interracial marriage of Jack Johnson, the first black world heavyweight boxing champion, to Etta Duryea, a white woman — also failed to garner anywhere near the two-thirds majorities required for passage. but it DID prompt 18 states — most of them in the South — to ban such marriages at the state level — until the U.S. Supreme Court, in Loving v. Virginia, unanimously declared those laws unconstitutional in a landmark ruling in 1967.

I swear, there ought to be a constitutional amendment to require that candidates for public office have a thorough knowledge of American history, for Cain clearly does not.