No liberal has standing to call any Republican stupid as long as Patty Murray remains in the U.S. Senate.

Soon after being elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992, Murray went on a radio show and said:

"When I was growing up, the big fear in my life was the nuclear war. I remember second- and third-grade teachers giving us skills to deal with it, if that big alarm goes off, which was 'Hide under your desk.' Would that do any good? I don't know. But as a child, that gives you a feeling there's something to do beyond panic. Today the biggest fear our kids live with is whether ... the kid beside them has a gun. We have to give them skills so they feel confident to deal with it."

The woman is not sure if ducking under a school desk would help in a nuclear attack. Not only that, but she wants to do something similarly pointless to help children "deal with" school shootings. Maybe imaginary bullet-proof vests!

With amazing understatement, one of Murray's Democratic colleagues in the state senate told The Seattle Times in 1992: "She just doesn't strike you as somebody who's been reading The New York Times every day for the past five years." I wonder when Katie Couric is going to ask Murray what newspapers she reads.

After Murray was elected to the U.S. Senate, the Democrats tried to keep her locked in her office to prevent her from saying anything that might end up in a newspaper. But in the confusion after the 9/11 attack, the leadership must have lost the keys and Murray escaped to say this about Osama bin Laden:

"He's been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day-care facilities, building health-care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. He's made their lives better."

Yes, Osama was out building "day-care facilities" -- and probably sponsoring "Bring Your Daughter to Work" days! I defy anyone to produce something stupider ever uttered by a homo sapiens. Not Barbara Boxer, Joe Biden or even John Edwards can hold their dimly lit candles to her.

Murray, whose college major was "recreation," got her start in politics fighting to save her own useless government job.

The laughably apocryphal story she tells is that she was told by some crusty old male politician -- still unnamed decades later: "You're just a mom in tennis shoes -- you can't make a difference!" (You know how politicians love gratuitously insulting their constituents.)

This stuck in Murray's craw and so, filled with righteous anger, she ran for state office and won as a "mom in tennis shoes."

The real story is that Murray was teaching a "parenting" class at a community college, which no one was taking, so the state decided to cut it. Murray's reaction was, "Wait -- I'm a public employee! You have no right to fire me!"

She wasn't a parent upset that her child's school was dropping an art history class. She was a deadbeat public employee who didn't want her job cut. No one was taking her course, but she thought taxpayers should be required to pay her salary anyway.

Fighting to keep your own cushy job isn't a point of principle; it's evidence of a narcissistic personality disorder.

But you have to do a lot of research to find out that the class being eliminated was Murray's own. This deliberate policy on the part of the press to hide Murray's utterly self-serving motive for saving the class proves they know this is a problem for her.

The media's admiration for Murray's tenacious political start is like applauding the pluck of a stalker: "That guy sure has moxie and determination!" You're not supposed to be canonized for fighting to keep your own job.

Murray is the equivalent of a Wall Street fat-cat saying, "I'm going to fight for my $50 million severance package because it's the right thing to do!"

This remarkably unimpressive woman has tried to turn being a flat-footed dork into an advantage by selling herself as a tribune of regular folks. Yes, like most regular folk, she listed no religious affiliation whatsoever in the first few editions of the Congressional Almanac. (She probably couldn't remember she was supposed to say "Catholic.")

Soon after being elected to the Senate in 1992, Murray fought for a federal government jobs program by saying, "The highest-paying job I had before coming to Washington, D.C., paid $23,000 a year. ... I know what it's like to tell my kids they can't buy everything they want."

Is that what Murray thinks a senator should be doing? Ensuring that parents can tell their children they can buy everything they want?

True, Murray is a mom. You could also describe Hitler as a "war veteran and painter," but I think the more salient fact is that he was a German dictator.

Similarly, Murray's relevant characteristic is that she is a lifelong public-sector union zealot.

Again, Murray's class was on "parenting" -- the very definition of a pointless government program. Imagine going back in a time machine and trying to explain to someone from 1950 why the government was paying for classes on "parenting." How about classes on "waking up" or "getting dressed"?

Democrats have completely infantilized the populace in order to create jobs for useless social workers like Murray -- and then people wonder why states are going bankrupt under crushing debt burdens.

But I guess we have to fund these idiotic programs in order not to be outshone by Osama's "Partnership With Working Mothers Initiative" in Peshawar.