Politifact has named Democratic claims that Republicans want to end Medicare as the lie of the year for 2011. While I share Mark Hemingway’s concerns about the rise of fact-checking operations, he also points out that it is harder to get one of these operations to point out a misleading claim from the Democrats, so that fact that the Medicare claim topped the list gives this assessment an added level of credibility. Of course, it’s not a new claim. As I wrote in Commentary a few months ago, Democrats have been engaged in a Mediscare campaign against Republicans on decades. The hope is that Politifact’s ruling will put an end to this canard for 2012 and beyond, but I wouldn’t count on it.