Gene Healy on Obama’s NSA Lie

It’s not easy
to pick the year’s most transparent lie from the self-styled “most
transparent administration in history.” There are so many to choose
from—such a richness of embarrassment. For its “Lie of the Year,”
PolitiFact went with President Obama’s “if you like your health
plan, you can keep it”; the Washington Post Fact-Checker put the
same statement at the top of its “biggest Pinocchios of 2013” list.
It’s a choice that has a lot to recommend it, but Obama’s been
singing that refrain since at least 2009. For Gene Healy’s money,
the biggest presidential lie of the year came on June 7, the week
after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden
revealed the agency’s secret collection of call records data on
millions of Americans. “I welcome this debate,” Obama
proclaimed—even as his administration was hunting down the
whistleblower who started it and preparing to hit him with 30 years
of Espionage Act charges.

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