On Monday, April 02 BHO declared:

"I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.

This is gross stupidity.

As Thomas Sowell put it:

But how unprecedented would it actually be if the Supreme Court declared a law unconstitutional if it was passed by "a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress"?

The Supreme Court has been doing precisely that for 209 years!

Tuesday and Wednesday were days BHO and his representatives spent backtracking; trying to explain away his ignorance:

Carney said during Wednesday's White House briefing. "He was referring to 85 years of judicial precedent, of Supreme Court precedent, with regard to matters like the one under consideration. And it's maybe fun to pretend he meant otherwise, but everyone here knows that that's what he meant."

No dice. "Unprecedented" is unprecedented. There is no "85 years" Statute of Limitations on "unprecedented."

"He was a law professor," Carney reminded the press corps.

BHO was a senior lecturer (not a professor) at the University of Chicago Law School and claims expertise in Constitutional Law.

Even many non-lawyers know that since the case of Marbury v. Madison, 209 years ago, every law that the Supreme Court has overturned was "passed."

And even a non-Constitutional Law attorney knows that, in the law, words are interpreted according to their plain and straightforward meaning.

The Supreme Court often recites the "plain meaning rule," that, if the language of the statute is clear, there is no need to look outside the statute to its legislative history in order to ascertain the statute's meaning.

There is no ambiguity in "unprecedented" and "extraordinary."

When I first proposed that BHO is learning disabled, citing as one example his failure to know what Jeremiah Wright was preaching despite 20 years of church attendance, many commentators suggested that, instead, he was clever like a fox and knew exactly what he was doing.

Believe that if you want.

How can one explain his failure to learn one of the absolute basics in law school, even though the average law student apparently can?

Thomas Sowell correctly characterizes BHO as a liar. However, this gaffe is too fundamental to be simply a lie. A gifted liar at the level of POTUS is more subtle when he really lies and would not be so easily caught.

No, this is something different. It is an act of "preterstupidity" and serves as further evidence that BHO possesses a learning disability.

Update from Michael Applebaum:

Laurence Tribe, who taught Obama at Harvard Law School, presumably on constitutional law (his specialty) has responded weakly:

Constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor and former mentor to President Barack Obama, said the president "obviously misspoke" earlier this week when he made comments about the Supreme Courtpossibly overturning the health-care law.

Mr. Tribe, who calls the president was one of his best students, said in an interview: "He didn't say what he meant...and having said that, in order to avoid misleading anyone, he had to clarify it."

What else could Larry Tribe say?

Perhaps to pre-empt the "Tribe was a crappy teacher" or "Tribe passes incompetent" or another personally unflattering accusation (e.g., BHO does not know that the Dec of Ind reads "unalienable" not "inalienable"), he has to play the role of excusinator and diagnose yet another "speaking malfunction."

Beauty may be skin deep and ugly may go clear down to the bone, but stupidity and mendacity penetrate into the soul.

At some point, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it actually is one and not Flipper in a costume.