Hatching Lies

I saw this over at Crooks and Liars and thought it deserved some special comments. Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch has never been a favorite of mine. I still remember those hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee in which Hatch accused Professor Anita Hill of lying about the sexual harassment she endured from then Supreme Court nominee, Clarence Thomas. (See Time: 1991) Hatch was not a very nice man and he was very disrespectful toward Ms. Hill. When I saw this at Crooks and Liars, I knew that once again Hatch was acting badly.
Crooks and Liars:
Rachel Maddow's Open Letter to Orrin Hatch

Dear Senator Hatch -

You don't call, you don't write…
I've just about exhausted myself trying to get someone in your office to call me back this week. Please apologize to your adorable receptionist on my behalf - the poor man now gets audibly exasperated as soon as I say "hello".
What I'd like to talk with you about is very simple: on NBC's Meet the Press this past Sunday, you said this about Carol Lam, the US Attorney for San Diego who was fired by the Justice Department in December:

"She was a former law professor, no prosecutorial experience, and the former campaign manager in Southern California for Clinton"

I checked the transcript against the video (or click here for the specific clip) and it's clear to me that you weren't misquoted....
....Here at Air America, we called John Emerson, who managed Clinton's California campaign in '92 and again in '96 to ask if Carol Lam had been the "campaign manager in Southern California for Clinton" - you might have thought we'd asked him if the sky was green.

First of all, uh, NO, she wasn't.

And second, Carol Lam was an Assistant US Attorney at the time of Clinton's campaigns, and she therefore couldn't have also been a campaign manager for any presidential candidate without violating the (ironically-named) Hatch Act, which restricts political activity by federal government employees.

Then we called a source close to Carol Lam in California, who expressed utter bewilderment at what old Orrin said on Meet the Press.
The source confirmed for us publicly-available documents about Lam's career which indicate that she is not a law professor, she's "been a federal prosecutor for nearly 18 years and [has] never been a fundraiser for any president".....

Rachel Maddow said it better than I could. Thank you, Rachel Maddow! (NOTE: We used to be able to hear the Rachel Maddow Show in Columbus, Ohio, until the talk radio station she was on traded liberal talk for radical right talk. Fortunately, for that same radio station, their ratings have slipped into the toilet. The ratings are so low at that right wing station, I don't know how they pay their electric bill.)

Shame, shame, shame, Sen. Hatch! Why do you feel the need to smear people with your lies? Didn't you learn you should never tell a lie?