Sheila Jackson Lee: Healthcare and Education are Constitutional Rights

Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee is a walking gaffe machine. Or a walking race-card machine. Or both. Anyway, considering she stands on the House floor "as a freed slave" and has compared the Tea Party to the KKK, she should not be given credence as an authority on any subject.

On May 6 while giving a speech to Congress, Jackson Lee made the following statements on healthcare, education, and how the Constitution deals with them:

I was very pleased to stand with my fellow Democrats and support the Affordable Care Act. I could go through the journey of 2009 and 2010, when many of us spread out across the country and confronted misinformation through town hall meetings, controversy and conflictedness.

And what should be emphasized as the president's leadership on one single point that although health care was not listed, per se, in the constitution, it should be a constitutional right. And if you read the words or quote the words of the Declaration of Independence, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that we have certain inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' One might argue that education and health care fall into those provisions of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Jackson Lee actually admits that healthcare and education are not listed in the Constitution as rights.Considering she supports massive and ever increasing federal intervention into both areas, it is safe to assume upholding her oath of office is not a priority.

Then Jackson Lee goes off the legal deep-end. She conflates the Constitution and Declaration of Independence as if they are the same documents or of the same legal standing, and they aren't. The Constitution is the law of the land, while the Declaration of Independence is a non-legal, but historically great rejection of British imperialism.

But the confusion of the two documents isn't even her main problem. The grave issue occurs when she confuses liberty with entitlement.

In reality, the right to liberty encompasses the right to life and the right to pursue happiness. If there is no right to life without it being deprived by another person, there is no liberty. If there is no right to pursue happiness without another person impeding it, there is no liberty.

But there is no right just to be alive. We all die. There is no right just to be happy. One may want to own the world, and it may make them happy, but that does not mean they have a right to it.

Sheila Jackson Lee epitomizes what is wrong with Congress today: too much wishful thinking and not enough good reading.