Darrell Issa Doesn't Really Know What a Lie Is:
Republican Congressman Darrell Issa of California, who is Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (or "Chief Motherfucker"), appeared on CNN's State of the Union with the Crowley variety of Candy yesterday and responded to questions about how he knows for sure that there's a scandal that goes all the way up to Washington, DC, involving the IRS looking a bit closer at tax exempt status applications for Tea Party groups. Crowley, to her infinite credit, called "bullshit" on Issa saying that he absolutely knew that someone at the IRS or elsewhere was lying. Where's the definitive proof? Issa couldn't offer it, so, instead, he just became a total twat and talked about lies and the "paid liar" of the White House, press secretary Jay Carney.

Most politicians avoid the word "lie" or "liar" because they're trying to leave wiggle room to be wrong. If you call someone a liar, then you are speaking definitively about intent and method. You are saying that the other person is being deliberately deceiving.

But Darrell Issa is a twat, and he knows that shit like "wrong" and "error" is for people who actually care about impediments like "truth." Issa has tossed around the "L" word several times, very pointedly, over the years.

For instance, in a December 12, 2011 editorial, he talked about "Lies, Green Lies, and Statistics," criticizing the Labor Department for putting money into training for green jobs. The lie? That such training would lead to a growth in jobs. At worst, from what Issa describes, it doesn't seem much like a lie as much as a failed project. But that doesn't prevent him from going bugfuck insane: "Rather being a boon to growth, green collar jobs are a green noose around the economy's neck, suffocating investment and hindering expansion. At a time when job creation is needed more than ever, wealth redistribution masked as radical environmentalism is nothing more than another in the series of baseless get-jobs-quick schemes that have come to typify Obamanomics." That's a whole lot of buzzwords crammed into a meaningless couple of sentences.

Or then there's this press release from September 25, 2009, "ACORN, lies and videotape" (Ha, it's a reference to a movie from 1989). He takes the complete falsehood of James O'Keefe's heavily edited pimp video as the real deal, and adds that "allegations of ACORN’s systematic fraud have been piling up. From concealing a million-dollar embezzlement by a top ACORN official, to voter registration fraud and the illegal use of taxpayer dollars, the problems with ACORN have been growing deeper and the calls for Congress to investigate, louder."

Do you see what he did there? He starts with the statement that there are "allegations" and then he lists those allegations as if they have been proven, case closed. Guilt by rhetorical inference. Or, you know, lies. And that's what Crowley was doing yesterday on CNN: showing Issa what a fucking liar he is. He has nothing on the IRS beyond a few employees grunting, "I dunno. Maybe someone in DC said to look closely at the new organizations with the word 'party' in their name to see if they're a political, you know, party."

There is no smoking gun. If there was, Issa would be brandishing it like a five year-old boy who just figured out that his dick gets hard. So, instead, it's just easier for Issa to call others liars and pretend that his lies aren't lies.