So you’re a Republican congressman who wants to get rid of parts of the Patriot Act. The Justice Department has said that your bill would eliminate needed anti-terrorism tools, and that it would not just repeal Patriot but eliminate pre-Patriot law-enforcement tools. Worse, this critique is true. (See here for more.) So what do you do?

If you’re Butch Otter, Republican representative from Idaho, you don’t bother trying to refute the charges. You just brazen through. You tell your colleagues, in a letter, that your bill “would not impede terrorist investigations and would not amend pre-Patriot Act law.” I guess if you underline a falsehood, that makes it true?