Vice President Biden is being urged by liberal activists to “brush up his Shakespeare.” His friends are trying desperately to clean up the latest mess that Joe Biden has caused. He recently told a group at a Legal Services Corporation event that his son, Beau Biden, had worked to protect our soldiers from “Shylocks” -- whom he described as unscrupulous lenders.

This is only one of the oldest anti-Semitic slurs in our language. It stems from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice and the Bard’s caricature of a moneylender.

Shakespeare may have been playing to the “groundlings” -- those common theatergoers in Elizabethan England who could not afford seats in the Globe Theatre, but who could be relied upon to guffaw and gape at the antics on stage. The grosser and more offensive, the better. And anti-Semitism played well with those groundlings.

Well, Vice President Biden does not disappoint the groundlings today. He typically will engage is some form of joefoolery whenever he strays even slightly away from his script. You can tell from his the motion of his head in the above linked clip that “Shylocks” is no term his speechwriters would have penned for him. They have more sense than that.

This is the same Joe Biden who forgot he his mic was live at the Signing Ceremony for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in March, 2010. He buttonholed his chief long enough to tell President Obama this was a “big f---ing deal.” Class act, Joe!

Then, in 2011, Joe Biden informed the world he had confronted Vladimir Putin in his Kremlin office. He told Putin to his face “I don’t think you have a soul at all.” Well, that’s why Joe gets paid the big bucks, to make intelligent statements like that.

Putin doubtless remembered that President Obama had put Joe Biden in charge of rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in the $857 billion stimulus package they rammed through Congress in the early days of this administration. Mr. Obama said he would sic his Vice President on wrongdoers because “no one messes with Joe.”

It wasn’t long after that Vladimir Putin snatched Crimea. The Russian messed with Joe and his boss, big time. Maybe Joe Biden really should brush up his Shakespeare. For sure, Vladimir Putin’s behavior since meeting our illustrious veep has been heinous. Here’s a Shakespearean line for Joe Biden’s speechwriters to feed him for his next Moscow trip. “If they say your behavior is heinous, kick `em right in the Coriolanus!”

We would not join the calls for his removal from office. He has already stepped down about as far as he can go. After all, he’s a liberal and being liberal, he only has to say he’s sorry. And then everyone agrees to MoveOn. Don’t they? It’s only conservatives who get drummed out of public life for such “a poor choice of words.”

Despite his non-stop record of flubs, foibles, and follies, Joe Biden wants us all to remember him when 2016 comes around. We sure will. And we pray we don’t have to remember him before then.

This week, we’ve had two intruders caught at the White House. Someone high up in the Secret Service is probably going to have some serious explaining to do. And we don’t think we need to expand the security corridor around the White House, Lafayette Park, and the Ellipse.

Instead, we suggest something to inspire sober second thoughts, a hint about the line of succession. Let’s post this sign on the White House fence:

Remember Joe Biden!