We have some stellar candidates running for president, and it has been wonderful to watch them come into their own on the national stage. Republicans (conservatives in particular) should be proud that we’ve been able to develop such a strong bench to launch a bid to retake the White House. One of the things many of our candidates believe in is the supremacy of the Constitution as the very basis from which our foundation, indeed our very rights as man, are derived.

And then, there’s John Kasich.

“Well, on the no-fly list, we probably could keep them from getting guns and ought to ban them,” Kasich said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

The Republican presidential hopeful said it is “common sense” to prevent people on terror watchlists from obtaining weapons, but that a balance must be struck in order to ensure suspects under review are not tipped off.

That’s two amendments in the Bill of Rights – the Second and the Fifth – that are being violated. Banning people who haven’t necessarily committed a crime from purchasing a gun by ruling without trial that they are guilty of something they haven’t done yet. That’s… pretty much all kinds of unconstitutional.

“We want to make sure that we can exploit all the information that we possibly can get. So if all of a sudden you tell everybody who’s on the watch list that you can’t do this or that, then guess what happens?” he said. “Then we lose our ability to track, we lose our ability to gather information, so I think we have to be careful.”

“Of course it makes common sense to say that if you’re on a terror watchlist that you shouldn’t be able to go out and get a gun, although you will be able to get it illegally, but what we have to deal with is the fact that we don’t want to tip somebody off that they’re under review and that we could be gathering critical information to disrupt the plot,” he added.

So in John Kasich’s America, if the government doesn’t like what you’re doing, you are put on a list that forbids you from flying, which is essentially the government declaring you guilty of something you may or may not have done without being tried by a jury of your peers. And because they have found you guilty, whether or not you have done anything wrong, you are then forbidden from otherwise legally purchasing a gun.

That seems like a stellar use of government. You know, the kind of use of government preferred by people who love to increase it for such things. Like John Kasich, Expander of Medicaid As Dictated By Jesus Christ Himself.

A true conservative.