Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Politics of lies

Mark Steyn:

Well, the week went pretty much as I predicted seven days ago:
Bush lied. Not.
Blair lied. Not.
But it turns out Joe Wilson lied. People died. Of embarrassment mostly. At least I'm assuming that's why the New York Times, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, PBS drone Bill Moyers and all the other media bigwigs Joseph C. Wilson IV suckered have fallen silent on the subject of the white knight of integrity they've previously given hold-Page One treatment.
And what about John F. Kerry? Joe Wilson campaigned with Mr. Kerry in at least six states, and claims to have helped with the candidate's speeches. He was said to be a senior foreign policy adviser to the senator. As of Friday, Mr. Wilson's Web site, restorehonesty.com, was still wholly paid for by Mr. Kerry's presidential campaign.
Heigh-ho. It would be nice to hear his media boosters howling en masse, "Say it ain't so, Joe." But Joe Wilson's already slipping down the old media memory hole. He served his purpose — he damaged Mr. Bush, he tainted the liberation of Iraq — and yes, by the time you read this the Kerry campaign may well have pulled the plug on his Web site, and Salon magazine's luxury cruise will probably have to find another headline speaker, and he won't be doing Tim Russert's "Meet the Press" again any time soon.

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For a book called "The Politics of Truth," it's remarkably short of it. On Page 2, Mr. Wilson says of his trip to Niger: "I had found nothing to substantiate the rumors." But he had.
That's what lying is, by the way: intentional deceit, not unreliable intelligence. And I'm not usually the sort to bandy the liar-liar-pants-on-fire charge beloved by so many in our politics today, but I'll make an exception in the case of Mr. Wilson, who has never been shy about the term.
He called Mr. Bush a "liar" and he called Vice President Dick Cheney a "lying sonofabitch" on stage at an Iowa Kerry rally.
Saddam wanted yellowcake for one reason — to strike at his neighbors in the region, and beyond that at Britain, America and his other enemies. In other words, he wanted the uranium in order to kill you.
The obvious explanation for Mr. Wilson's deceit about what he found in Africa is his hatred of Bush outweighed everything else. Or as the novelist and Internet maestro Roger L Simon said: "He is a deeply evil human being willing to lie and obfuscate for temporary political gain about a homicidal dictator's search for weapon's grade uranium." Technically, it's weaponizable uranium, not "weapon's grade." But that's the point. Mr. Simon isn't the expert, and, as Mr. Wilson trumpets loudly and often, Mr. Wilson is. This isn't a case of another Michael Moore, court buffoon to the Senate Democrats, or Whoopi Goldberg, has-been potty-mouth for John Kerry. They're in showbiz; what do they know?
But Mr. Wilson does know; he went there, he talked to officials, and he lied about America's national security in order to be the anti-Bush crowd's Playmate of the Month. Either he's profoundly wicked or he's as deranged as that woman on the Paris Metro last week who falsely claimed to have been the victim of an anti-Semitic attack. The Paris crazy was unmasked in a few days, but the Niger crazy was lionized a full year.