Sarah Palin

And She Was Almost Vice President

The level of stupid in the following remark by Sarah Palin on last night's O'Reilly Factor is immeasurable.

"[O]ur Constitution, of course, essentially acknowledging that our unalienable rights don't come from man; they come from God. So this document is set up to protect us from a government that would ever infringe upon our rights to have freedom of religion and to be able to express our faith freely."

Steve Benen points out the obvious problem here: the line "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" comes from the Declaration of Independence. Not the Constitution, which contains no mention whatsoever of any variety of "God" or "Creator."

And while we're here, I should point out that the Declaration didn't just declare that all American men are created equal and "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The Declaration stated that these human rights were endowed to all people -- regardless of religion, race, nationality or ethnicity. The Palins of this world tend to conveniently forget these details when it comes to topics like immigration and war.

Back to Palin. So not only was she incapable of accurately describing the role of the vice president -- the job for which she was running -- but she's also incapable to telling the difference between two very different and distinct founding documents. Holy crap -- imagine the smoke billowing from her ears if someone were to ask her about the Articles of Confederation. My guess is her answer would involve Jefferson Davis and secession.

And finally, if any wingnut can show me a document written by either James Madison or any other participant in the Constitutional Convention that indicates the borrowing of Christian dogma for use in the Constitution, I will retract all of this and, I don't know, follow Sarah Palin on Twitter.