Sarah Palin is a stupid, stupid idiot.

Benen via Cesca

On Fox News last night, Bill O'Reilly and former half-term Gov. Sarah Palin (R) discussed their belief that "America is a Christian nation." Palin -- who I'd swear is getting dumber -- offered viewers this gem:

"[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."

First, "inalienable" isn't in the Constitution; it's in the Declaration of Independence. Second, the Constitution makes literally no references to our rights "coming from God." In fact, the Constitution doesn't mention God, Christianity, the Ten Commandments, or Scripture at all. Palin doesn't have any idea what she's talking about.

Specifically defending the practice of the federal government encouraging Americans to engage in worship, Palin went on to argue:

"I think we should kind of keep this clean, keep it simple, go back to what our founders and our founding documents meant. They're quite clear that we would create law based on the God of the Bible and the 10 Commandments. It's pretty simple."

Perhaps "simple" in the idiotic sense, but not in reality. For one thing, if we take Palin's advice and honor what the Founding Fathers thought, we wouldn't have a National Day of Prayer. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison explicitly rejected state-sponsored prayer days. Palin has this backwards because she doesn't know what she's talking about.

The worst thing that could happen to Sarah Palin is for John McCain to die in the next 18 months. The collective shudder down the backs of mainstream America will be palpable. It's one thing to have an idiot for a vice-president. But for Americans to internalize that this nudnik could have been in the Oval Office during this time of tremendous change and risk?

McCain dying in the next year or so will put a dagger in the Palin Tea Party's (somehow still slightly breathing) hopes of being taken seriously.

Speaking of seriously, Keith Olbermann Tweeted this recently. It's a chat from the Washington Post with Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips.

Check out the last question/response:

Maryland: I am sorry but your answer of "I think the political class is afraid of the Tea Party movement. After all, we get people out as volunteers and get them to the polls. For them, it cannot be the same as usual in D.C. A lot of them are going to be unemployed after the first of the year and that does scare them" is really offensive. This us vs. them mentality is really repulsive to me. I am a hard-working middle class American and I don't agree with anything you are saying, and I have a right not agree with you. But you splitting the citizenry into classes of "elites/political class/Washington insiders/liberals" vs "real Americans" is just plain wrong! and that's the problem with your movement.

Liberals are just as American as you are and you and your movement has no right to question people's patriotism or Americanness just because they disagree with you.

Judson Phillips: Yes we do. You folks in the left do far worse. Patriotism is not something that cannot be measured. It can be. And you folks on the left, as a general rule are not patriotic. You do not love this country. You are embarrassed by us.

I hate to tell you this, but those of us in fly over country are the real Americans.

There's the Tea Party vision of America folks.