Remember last summer, when the Congressional Black Caucus was pushing Sheila Jackson Lee to be the new head of Homeland Security?  Aside from her previously disclosed problems with managing staff, one of the main criticisms was that the woman simply was not smart enough for the job.

Considering our serving president, one could have reason to wonder if that’s even a requirement for a department head in a Democrat administration. Whether or not Sheila could have done any more damage to the country than her party’s leader, yesterday she provided additional proof that there are some gaps in her grasp of American history and governance. Standing before the House, Lee offered this:

Maybe I should offer a good thanks to the distinguished members of the majority, the Republicans, my chairman and others, for giving us an opportunity to have a deliberative constitutional discussion that reinforces the sanctity of this nation and how well it is that we have lasted some 400 years, operating under a constitution that clearly defines what is constitutional and what is not[.]

As the folks at Washington Free Beacon point out, she missed the Constitution’s launch by only 173 years.

This is a woman with a degree in political science from Yale and a law degree from Virginia – both degree fields supposedly requiring significant study of American politics and American law, both of which are grounded in that Constitution.  Was Sheila snoozing in class?

Oh, well.  The un-constitutional law professor now leading us believes we have 57 states, so Sheila’s blooper is no big deal.  He thinks we’re bigger; she thinks we’re older.

But Sheila, you see, is a serial offender.  She once asked her tour guide at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena if the Mars Rover had been able to photograph the flag Neil Armstrong had planted.  Sheila, that was the Moon Neil visited, not Mars.

Then there’s this demonstration of Lee’s grasp of geopolitics.  Once again, standing on the House floor back in 2010:

I stand here asking us to do what we did not in do in Vietnam, was to recognize the valiant and outstanding service of our men and women, and to understand that victory had been achieved. Today, we have two Vietnams, side by side, North and South, exchanging and working. We may not agree with all that North Vietnam is doing, but they are living in peace. I would look for a better human rights record for North Vietnam, but they are living side by side.

Four decades after North Vietnam rolled over the South and created a single Vietnam, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee thinks the South still exists, or coexists, side by side with the North.  Sheesh!

This woman is out-dumbed only by her fellow CBC member, Hank Johnson, who expressed his fear to an admiral testifying before a congressional committee about the consequences of moving several thousand Marines to Guam – to wit, that so many additional personnel might cause that island to "tip over and capsize."  I kid you not.

And these people are our duly elected leaders?