If it seems like knee-jerk nit-picking to poke at Brian Williams for bringing up the word “perjurer” with Roberts, perhaps it’s just my bad memories of how liberal media types completely overreacted and beat up Arlen Specter (yes, Arlen Specter!) for suggesting Anita Hill may have committed perjury in the Hill-Thomas hearings in 1991:

“Arlen Specter took on this role as the Great Inquisitor. Some people [feminists] think he pilloried Anita Hill, that with his sort of low-blow hit on perjury, they’re saying to a friend in Pennsylvania, who’s been pro-choice, been on their side: ‘How could you do this to me?’” — Time reporter Julie Johnson, October 18 Washington Week in Review.

“Arlen Specter accused her of perjury. If you read the record, Arlen Specter was the one who distorted what she said. Orrin Hatch even suggested that she got one of her charges by reading ‘The Exorcist.’ I mean that she was besieged by demons. Orrin should really stick to talking dirty. He does that better.” — Wall Street Journal Washington Bureau Chief Al Hunt on CNN’s Capital Gang, October 19.

“The lowest point on the first day of the hearing came when Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter implied that Hill had simply fantasized Thomas’ asking for dates and his lurid remarks about pornography. It is all but inconceivable that a similarly qualified man, black or white, would be accused not merely of lying but of imagining things.” — Time Senior Editor Jack E. White, October 21.