Representative Cynthia McKinney -- the less than distinguished, far from gentle woman from Georgia -- is a fighter, not a thinker.

The Congresswoman proved both last month when, according to a police report, she assaulted a Capitol Hill police officer "with [a] closed fist" after he tried to stop her from rushing right through a House office building's security checkpoint without showing her congressional credentials.  But that's only the beginning of this story.

In the aftermath of McKinney's fit of rage at not being recognized as one of the 535 members of the House of Representatives, supporters of the embattled Congresswoman flooded the blogosphere with posts asserting she couldn't be arrested.  Indeed, McKinney seemed to be arguing the same thing when, in a particularly strange move, her own congressional website homepage started highlighting Article I, Section 6 of the U.S. Constitution.

That part of the Constitution includes what is often known as the congressional "privilege from arrest" clause, which states: "The Senators and Representatives ... shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same..."  In other words, McKinney and her supporters claimed that the Congresswoman was constitutionally privileged in assaulting a Capitol Hill police officer because of her elected status.  Of course, here's where that description of McKinney as a fighter, not a thinker proves itself all over again.

If the Congresswoman, her staff, or her supporters had researched -- or even read -- the Constitution's congressional "privilege from arrest" clause, it should have occurred to them that the phrase specifically does not provide any privilege for a "Breach of the Peace."  Now no one has to tell us that Congress isn't made up of the best and brightest.  But surely even the dimmest member can understand that starting a fist fight at a Capitol Hill security check point necessarily breaches the peace, especially in this post-9/11 world.

Moreover, even assuming the Congresswoman couldn't understand the plain language of the Constitution -- which, by the way, she takes an oath to uphold as the supreme law of the land -- some quick legal research by herself or any member of her staff would have pointed to more than one decision by the Supreme Court of the United States specifically ruling that the Constitution does not protect legislators from being charged with and arrested for a crime.  Indeed, nearly a century ago, another congressman took the same argument all the way to the highest court in the land, prompting the justices to explain that the Constitution "excepts from the operation of the privilege all criminal[ ] offenses..."  In that case, the Supreme Court did all the legal and historical research necessary, publishing a 37-page opinion tracing the congressional "privilege from arrest" clause back through the Constitutional Convention to the Articles of Confederation to English common law, and "fix[ing] the meaning of those words" as applying "exclusively to arrest in civil cases ... [and] excluding from the ... privilege all arrests and prosecutions for criminal offenses."

We can only guess that either McKinney or someone on her staff has focused a little more on thinking and a little less on fighting in the three weeks since her misadventure because not only did the Congresswoman apologize to the police officer on the House floor but the congressional "privilege from arrest" clause also disappeared from her website homepage.  Nevertheless, since McKinney appears to want to use her personal misadventure to educate the public about our Constitution, we suggest she might want to highlight another constitutional provision that seems especially appropriate now -- the Fifth Amendment.  After all, with the U.S. Attorney bringing McKinney's actions to the attention of a federal grand jury, who better to teach the public that "No person shall be held to answer for a[n] ... infamous crime[ ] unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury."