Orrin Opens His Hatch

And out falls a lie.

Update: Hatch & Limbaugh Lam-inaters, Inc.

Via Avedon Carol, Hilzoy has an update on where Hatch and Limbaugh may have gotten their coordinatied talking points about fired U.S. attorney, and fellow republican, Carol Lam:

However: in the course of researching this, I think I have figured out what accounts for this bizarre set of obvious factual errors. Everything that Hatch says about Lam is in fact true of one of her predecessors, Alan Bersin. In an article on Carol Lam in the National Review, published a couple of days before Hatch went on MTP, Byron York writes this (while discussing how Lam was chosen for the US Attorney's job):

"It wasn’t an easy job; the position of U.S. attorney for the Southern District had been wracked by politics in the previous decade. In 1993, Bill Clinton replaced the Republican U.S. attorney, a career prosecutor and veteran of 20 years in the Justice Department, with Alan Bersin, a law professor who had no prosecutorial experience but who had been a classmate of Clinton’s at Yale and head of the Clinton campaign in San Diego. (Bersin pledged to vigorously pursue Clinton priorities like environmental law.) In March 1998, Bersin resigned to become head of the San Diego school system. "

Gives a glimpse of the mechanism by which talking points fly around the Republican back room. NRO to Limbaugh to your U.S. Senate. Beautiful.

Rachel Maddow Keeps Digging

Via Huffington Post and related to the Hatch & Limbaugh Lam-inating Service, Air America's Rachel Maddow has been trying to get in touch with Sen. Hatch:


You don't call, you don't write...orrin hatch

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".

And as I guessed in the first post:

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.

New definition of the "Hatch Act": Laying an explosive egg on live TV.

There's more, of course, over there. And more Maddow here.

The Logic of Over-the-Top Suspicion [Updatedx5]

Watch this video of one more Bush supporter and a few more lies, via Rachel Maddow. Another day, another couple of lies. This one about Carol Lam, former U.S. Attorney General [d'oh!] based in Sand Diego, who was fired in the recent USAt. firing scandal.


One revealing aspect of this story is that all of these USAs [ed.] were appointed by Bush, and now, no surprise, Bush supporters are going after them with a vengeance. (More cannibalism here.) Here's what Bushite Republican senator Orrin Hatch said about Carol Lam, who, again, was appointed by President Bush in 2002:

She's a former law professor; no prosecutorial experience; and the former campaign manager in Southern California for Clinton. Full Quote from TPM.

Liar Hatch: Carol Lam blah blah blah.

Fact: Orrin hatch is a liar (okay, he could just be an idiot). First - go here (The Sideshow) Updated here:

Tuesday she checked with Carol Lam's people, who said that not only had she had nothing to do with the Clinton campaign, Hatch was also, um, misspeaking, when he said she was a former law professor with no prosecutorial experience - she had 15 years worth of experience, though she'd never been a law professor.

And here (top item) is a (cached) Associated press bio on Carol Lam:

NAME: Carol Chien-Hua Lam

BIRTH DATE-AGE: June 26, 1959; 47

EDUCATION: Yale University; Stanford Law School

CAREER: Assistant U.S. attorney in San Diego, 1986-2000; San Diego Superior Court judge, 2000-02; U.S. attorney in San Diego, 2002-February 2007; legal counsel for San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc., February 2007-present.

Did she throw a professorship in there somewhere? It's possible, but, according to above link, she did not. And she had, per that bio, 15 years of prosecutorial experience when she was appointed…by President Bush. Was she a Clinton campaign manager? The above link says no. And you've gotta think that an assistant U.S attorney might be disallowed from such a thing, and Carol Lam was just that during all the years of Clinton's presidency (and five years prior).

[UPDATE: Our liberal media still hasn't reported on Hatch's Lam-inating of the facts. I'll keep checking.]

[UPDATE II: Dang, I looked and looked last night but could not find where I'd seen the following Limbaugh link. It was FireDogLake. Yesterday their link to the Limbaugh transcript allowed you to see the whole show - but it's inaccessible now. Hmm. Sorry for the late acknowledgement, FDL.]

And Rush Limbaugh told the same lies about Lam the other day [yesterday, it turns out] on his radio show (cached Google - Limbaugh hides behind a subscription):

Carol Lam was a campaign manager! These people would normally be made ambassadors, but Clinton put her in as a US attorney.

"Clinton put her in as a U.S. attorney." No, Bush put her in as U.S. attorney.

Rush Limbaugh: Liar.

Fact: Rush Limbaugh is a liar.

A point that can not be made too often.

Back to the headline, The Logic of Over-the-Top Suspicion. When you've been lied too as many times as we have, it is illogical and irrational to think that anything that comes out of their mouths is the truth. They're lying. About anything important, anything especially regarding claims of innocence on a charge like this one. We would be irresponsible to think that they weren't lying at this point. We've been lied to too many times.

UPDATE III: Go here for the story of how these lies apparently came to be.

UPDATE IV: Oh my geehad just when you thought it couldn't get worse for Hatch - it can. And it has. Via TPM, Hatch has an explanation for his lies:

My comments about Carol Lam's record as a U.S. Attorney were accurate, but I misspoke when making the point of discussing politically connected U.S. Attorneys. I accidentally used her name, instead of her predecessor, Alan Bersin, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton.

As Josh Marshall said:

The simple fact is that Hatch's explanation makes no sense. He's saying: In the course of attacking Carol Lam I inadvertantly used Lam's name when describing facts that may or may not apply to, Alan Bersin, a guy Bill Clinton appointed to the same office back in the mid-1990s.

Does that make any sense at all? Of course not.

There's more over there.

UPDATE V: Rachel Maddow has the letter from Hatch saying I misspoke, but she still like totally sucks. What a man.

Still no word about Limbaugh's apology...