Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) stunned attendees at a high school solar eclipse event Monday by claiming the rock-solid moon is a “planet” that is “made up mostly of gases” — before adding she still wants to be “first in line” to learn how to live there.
The former top Democrat on the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee badly botched elementary lunar facts while speaking during the gathering at Booker T. Washington High School in Houston.
“You’ve heard the word ‘full moon.’ Sometimes you need to take the opportunity just to come out and see a full moon is that complete rounded circle, which is made up mostly of gases,” Jackson Lee, 74, told teenage pupils who gathered on a sports field ahead of the rare celestial event.
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In a statement to The Post on Tuesday, she admitted she was wrong to describe the moon, which has virtually no atmosphere, as being composed mostly of gas to the schoolkids.
“Obviously I misspoke and meant to say the sun, but as usual, Republicans are focused on stupid things instead of stuff that really matters. What can I say, though, foolish thinkers lust for stupidity!” she said of GOPers who swiftly criticized her glaring gaffes.
This isn’t the first time that the final frontier has vexed Jackson Lee:
During a 1997 visit to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, Jackson Lee, who was then serving on the House Science Committee and on the Subcommittee that oversees U.S. space policy, asked a guide whether the Mars Pathfinder would be able to show an image of “the flag the astronauts planted there before.” When it was subsequently pointed out that the flag to which she was referring was in fact the one that Neil Armstrong had planted on the Moon—not Mars—in 1969, Jackson Lee complained that she was being mocked by bigots. “You thought you could have fun with a black woman member of the Science Committee,” her then-chief-of-staff wrote angrily in a letter to the editor.
How bad have Jackson Lee’s gaffes been over the years? Even her fellow leftists at the Daily Beast has goofed on her worst moments: The Constitution Is 400 Years Old and More Pearls From Sheila Jackson Lee.
UPDATE: Citing Jackson Lee, America’s Newspaper of Record reports: American Transition To Idiocracy Running Ahead Of Schedule.