Now that President Barack Obama has instituted a new deferred action policy that will protect millions of immigrants from deportation, you might be worried about the health of the Constitution. Not in a hackneyed, metaphorical sense, where someone exceeds his constitutional authority and swift repercussions await, but the literal health of the Constitution—the document itself.

"We can't just stand idly by and try to find some political opportunity while the president basically shreds the Constitution and flushes it down the toilet," Rush Limbaugh demanded.

Last week, Senator David Vitter—a bona fide Rhodes Scholar—called the steps Obama announced Thursday night “a shredding of the Constitution.”

Obama has torn Article I from our Constitution and claimed it for himself. It shall not be so. Mark my word. Defund!! pic.twitter.com/GGyIktv4P1 — Steve King (@SteveKingIA) November 21, 2014

Many others have claimed likewise. The Constitution is in tatters, apparently. This alarmed me. Though I moved to Washington almost 10 years ago, and never once set foot in the National Archives Museum, where the Constitution is housed beneath vandal-proof glass, I nevertheless have always felt strongly that shredding the Constitution is something you shouldn't do, especially if you're the president of the United States.

Fortunately, The New Republic's D.C. headquarters sit just two blocks north of the Archives. (Disclosure: Our office also shares a building with a tourist hot spot celebrating espionage agencies that run afoul of the Constitution on a regular basis.) So on Friday, armed with a press badge, I set off to confirm the Constitution’s fate.