Is there a penalty for violating the Constitution? If not, then can it just be ignored?

Yes and no.

The Constitution does not provide a set of penalties for violations. Instead, it authorizes Congress (and by extension state governments) to pass laws based on the Constitution Breaking those laws does invite penalties.

For example, the Constitution prohibits involuntary servitude. Various federal and state laws exist that define what constitutes involuntary servitude and prescribe penalties or violations.

You can't really violate the Constitution. The government cannot act outside its constitutional authority. And I don't just mean it's against the law for them to do so; I mean it's legally impossible. Congress cannot, for instance, make a law abolishing free speech. They could write 'free speech is hereby abolished' on a bit of paper and go through the process, but that wouldn't actually be a law because they don't have the power to make it.

So a penalty wouldn't really make sense. The law imposes penalties when you do something you ought not to have done. But you can't violate the Constitution. You couldn't have a penalty for making an unconstitutional law, because if something is unconstitutional then it's not a law.

Basically the idea of a penalty presupposes that a law can be broken. The Constitution presupposes that it cannot be violated. The two ideas are fundamentally incompatible.

Yes it is a serious problem. Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate with a perfect Constitutional voting record. If you disregard part of the constitution or take a loose interpretation of it or find loopholes around it you set president for the whole thing to be disregarded. You are either 100% for it or are against it.

Ron Paul 2012!

If you took an oath to support and defend it, you can be impeached for failing to do so if you hold an elected office.

Obama finds the Constitution to be an inconvenient document that he can subvert via executive order. Until the Legislative Branch reigns him in, Obama will continue to assume that he has their power and usurp it.

And voting for a Village Idiot like Ron Paul will not change anything.

You are correct. The Bush administration shredded the constution with their wholesale invasion of US privacy through the phone company / internet service providers and circumventing the FISA courts in contradiction of US law. They lied us into a war with a country that did not have weapons of mass destruction to line their own pockets by awarding no-bid contracts to companies that they have deep financial ties to (Kellog-Brown-Root, Halliburtion). They worked with Goldman-Sachs and Lieman brothers to push fraudlent sub-prime mortgages in ethnic communities, commodatize them, and sell the bogus investments to pension funds and municipalities. They ripped off the American People of TRILLIONS of dollars. Only Scooter Libby was sent to jail and the rest walk free.

I assume you arte referring to President Obama? Got any examples?

1

not any more, hellyou dont even have to be eligible to occupy the white house.

it seems you are unclear of the term 'undeclared war'. when under attack from a foreign entity, the preseident has the abiltiy to delcvare war, so the whole "bush's illegal war" idea is right out.

as for bush 41, pretty much the same story, defending an ally who is attacked.

obama claims he isnt in a war by using funky language (kinetic military aciton) and he actually needs to be deported or shot, but i agree with you there.

The White House has been subpoenaed. OBAMA HAS BEEN SUBPOENAED.....The Americans want the truth...OCCUPY D.C.... http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/3/hou...

Not if you are the federal government.