We need to be careful about how we treat people who lie to us.

Today’s online version of the Washington Post has a story about how, With a deadline looming, nobody is threatening to shut down the government.  Whoa, hey!  Sounds like good news.

Here’s how it starts:

Congress is off for two weeks, and when lawmakers return, they will quickly face a critical deadline to keep the government open. But in an unusual development on Capitol Hill, where budget brinkmanship has become a reliable expression of political dysfunction, nobody is threatening to shut the government down.

Instead, Republicans and Democrats appear to be working together to keep the lights on in Washington.

Double-wow.  Who’d think that the Democrats don’t want to blow up the government this time?  Not like the last time, when they….

Huh.  When, exactly, did the Democrats held the government hostage to the budget?  I can’t remember.  How about refusing to increase the debt limit?

How about ‘never’?

The Republicans are the only party that used government shutdowns for easy blackmail.  They not only threatened to do it, the actually shut the federal government down. Twice, for weeks at a time!  And Republicans are the only party who threatened to let the country default on our debts, even though that would have been insanely bad for the country.

I don’t care if the Washington Post and their editors somehow forget recent and obvious history or they actually choose to make this false equivalence.  In either case, it’s not just a mistake, it’s a lie.