Just Call Me ‘Liar of the Year’

It would appear that I am the Liar of the Year.

The fact-checking journalists at PolitiFact.com gave their 2010 Lie of the Year award to the notion that ObamaCare is "a government takeover of health care," and in 2009 gave the same award to Sarah Palin's "death panels" claim.  But as I explain in my latest column for Kaiser Health News, the fact-checkers left out a few facts.  Read the column to find out what PolitiFact missed.  Here's my conclusion:

From my vantage point, the evidence shows that ObamaCare is a government takeover of health care, and Sarah Palin's "death panels" claim was essentially true. If that makes me Liar of the Year, so be it.

But another way to look at it is this: PolitiFact has now misappropriated this award for two years in a row.  Not only is each of these "lies" factually true, but -- and this is more important -- the people who made those statements believe them to be true, which means they fall short of the dictionary definition of a lie: "An assertion of something known or believed by the speaker to be untrue with intent to deceive." There is simply no factual basis -- and no excuse -- for calling them lies.

PolitiFact's Lie of the Year award has proven as  conducive to civil discourse as Rep. Joe Wilson's, R- S.C., dyspeptic "You lie!" outburst during one of President Obama's previous addresses to Congress. Rather than continue to poison the well by dispensing another award this year, PolitiFact should just let it lie.

PolitiFact should also revisit its evaluations of those two claims.