Rep. Ken Buck says he will not serve out rest of term, narrowing GOP majority; The Washington Post, March 14, 2024

Amy B Wang

 and 

Patrick Svitek

, The Washington Post; Rep. Ken Buck says he will not serve out rest of term, narrowing GOP majority

"“Our nation is on a collision course with reality, and a steadfast commitment to truth, even uncomfortable truths, is the only way forward,” Buck said then. “Too many Republican leaders are lying to America.”

Buck also cited Republicans’ downplaying the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, in which a pro-Trump mob sought to stop the certification of Biden’s electoral win, as well as the GOP’s claims that the ensuing prosecutions amounted to a weaponization of the justice system.

“These insidious narratives breed widespread cynicism and erode Americans’ confidence in the rule of law,” Buck said. “It is impossible for the Republican Party to confront our problems and offer a course correction for the future while being obsessively fixated on retribution and vengeance for contrived injustices of the past.”"

When is it OK to lie?; NPR, August 22, 2023

 Frank Festa, NPR; When is it OK to lie?

"Knowing when a friend or loved one is seeking honest feedback can be difficult. The best way to find out is to ask them what they need — do they want your opinion? Or do they want you to listen to them vent?"

A Dishonesty Expert Stands Accused of Fraud. Scholars Who Worked With Her Are Scrambling.; The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 22, 2023

Stephanie M. Lee and 

Nell Gluckman

, The Chronicle of Higher Education; A Dishonesty Expert Stands Accused of Fraud. Scholars Who Worked With Her Are Scrambling.

"To Maurice Schweitzer, a University of Pennsylvania professor, it seemed logical to team up with Francesca Gino, a rising star at Harvard Business School. They were both fascinated by the unseemly side of human behavior — misleading, cheating, lying in order to profit — and together, they published eight studies over nearly a decade.

Now, Schweitzer wonders if he was the one being deceived."

‘Do you have no shame?’: Tulsi Gabbard grills congressman-elect George Santos; The Guardian, December 28, 2022

Samira Asma-Sadeque, The Guardian; ‘Do you have no shame?’: Tulsi Gabbard grills congressman-elect George Santos

"Santos, who has also admitted to lying about graduating from Baruch College and working at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, said he was not “a fake” and that “everybody wants to nitpick” at him now.

But Gabbard put Santos on the spot by asking him how he defines “integrity”."

U.S. News Ranked Columbia No. 2, but a Math Professor Has His Doubts; The New York Times, March 17, 2022

Anemona Hartocollis, The New York Times; U.S. News Ranked Columbia No. 2, but a Math Professor Has His Doubts

"The rankings have driven colleges to make relatively benign changes in culture, but there has also been some fraud, Mr. Diver said. “There’s been repeated evidence of not just gaming the system,” he said, but also “outright misrepresentation, outright lying.”

Last year, a former dean of Temple University’s business school was found guilty of using fraudulent data between 2014 and 2018 to improve the school’s national rankings and increase revenue. The school’s online M.B.A. program was ranked best in the country by U.S. News & World Report in the years that he falsified data.

Over the years, other schools like Iona College, Claremont McKenna College and Emory University have been found to have falsified or manipulated data."

Some people are lying to get vaccinated, and it’s testing their friendships; The Washington Post, March 25, 2021

Ashley Fetters, The Washington Post; Some people are lying to get vaccinated, and it’s testing their friendships

"The rules seem simple enough: For hundreds of millions of people to receive a lifesaving vaccination efficiently, you have to wait your turn. But as many Americans wait, they’re watching others exploit the system in plain view. And while some of the moral murkiness of the moment is rooted in the uneven, somewhat haphazard vaccination rollout in much of the country, the truth is that some friends may never see their line-jumping loved ones the same way again."

How an Élite University Research Center Concealed Its Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein; The New Yorker, September 6, 2019

Ronan Farrow, The New Yorker;

How an Élite University Research Center Concealed Its Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein

New documents show that the M.I.T. Media Lab was aware of Epstein’s status as a convicted sex offender, and that Epstein directed contributions to the lab far exceeding the amounts M.I.T. has publicly admitted.

 

"Current and former faculty and staff of the media lab described a pattern of concealing Epstein’s involvement with the institution. Signe Swenson, a former development associate and alumni coordinator at the lab, told me that she resigned in 2016 in part because of her discomfort about the lab’s work with Epstein. She said that the lab’s leadership made it explicit, even in her earliest conversations with them, that Epstein’s donations had to be kept secret...

Swenson said that, even though she resigned over the lab’s relationship with Epstein, her participation in what she took to be a coverup of his contributions has weighed heavily on her since. Her feelings of guilt were revived when she learned of recent statements from Ito and M.I.T. leadership that she believed to be lies. “I was a participant in covering up for Epstein in 2014,” she told me. “Listening to what comments are coming out of the lab or M.I.T. about the relationship—I just see exactly the same thing happening again.”"

The Trump administration is in an unethical league of its own; Washington Post, March 1, 2018

Max Boot, Washington Post; The Trump administration is in an unethical league of its own

"One of the great non-mysteries of the Trump administration is why Cabinet members think they can behave like aristocrats at the court of the Sun King. The Department of Housing and Urban Development spent $31,000 for a dining set for Secretary Ben Carson’s office while programs for the poor were being slashed. The Environmental Protection Agency has been paying for Administrator Scott Pruitt to fly first class and be protected by a squadron of bodyguards so he doesn’t have to mix with the great unwashed in economy class. The Department of Veterans Affairs spent $122,334 for Secretary David Shulkin and his wife to take what looks like a pleasure trip to Europe last summer; Shulkin’s chief of staff is accused of doctoring emails and lying about what happened. The Department of Health and Human Services paid more than $400,000 for then-Secretary Tom Price to charter private aircraft — a scandal that forced his resignation. 

Why would Cabinet members act any differently when they are serving in the least ethical administration in our history? The “our” is important, because there have been more crooked regimes — but only in banana republics. The corruption and malfeasance of the Trump administration is unprecedented in U.S. history. The only points of comparison are the Gilded Age scandals of the Grant administration, Teapot Dome under the Harding administration, and Watergate and the bribe-taking of Vice President Spiro Agnew during the Nixon administration. But this administration is already in an unethical league of its own. The misconduct revealed during just one day this week — Wednesday — was worse than what presidents normally experience during an entire term...

Given the ethical direction set by this president, it’s a wonder that his Cabinet officers aren’t stealing spoons from their official dining rooms. Come to think of it, maybe someone should look into that."

"Trump Day", robrogers.com, August 6, 2017

Rob Rogers, robrogers.com; "Trump Day"

Bobby Sticks It to Trump; New York Times, August 5, 2017

Maureen Dowd, New York Times; Bobby Sticks It to Trump

"We are in for an epic clash between two septuagenarians who both came from wealthy New York families and attended Ivy League schools but couldn’t be more different — the flamboyant flimflam man and the buttoned-down, buttoned-up boy scout. (And we know the president has no idea how to talk to scouts appropriately.)

One has been called America’s straightest arrow. One disdains self-promotion and avoids the press. One married his sweetheart from school days. One was a decorated Marine in Vietnam. One counts patience, humility and honesty as the virtues he lives by and likes to say “You’re only as good as your word.”

And one’s president."

Trump's Lies; New York Times, June 23, 2017

David Leonhardt and Stuart A. Thompson, New York Times; Trump's Lies

"Many Americans have become accustomed to President Trump’s lies. But as regular as they have become, the country should not allow itself to become numb to them. So we have catalogued nearly every outright lie he has told publicly since taking the oath of office."

Trump is now raging at Jeff Sessions. This hints at a deeply unsettling pattern.; Washington Post, June 6, 2017

Greg Sargent, Washington Post; Trump is now raging at Jeff Sessions. This hints at a deeply unsettling pattern.

"Students of authoritarianism see a pattern taking shape

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University who writes extensively on authoritarianism and Italian fascism, told me that a discernible trait of authoritarian and autocratic rulers is ongoing “frustration” with the “inability to make others do their bidding” and with “institutional and bureaucratic procedures and checks and balances.”

“Trump doesn’t respect democratic procedure and finds it to be something that gets in his way,” Ben-Ghiat said. “The blaming of others is very typical of autocrats, because they have difficulty listening to a reality that doesn’t coincide with their version of it. It’s part of the authoritarian temperament to blame others when things aren’t working.”

Trump expects independent officials “to behave according to personal loyalty, as opposed to following the rules,” added Timothy Snyder, a history professor at Yale University who wrote “On Tyranny,” a book of lessons from the 20th Century. “For Trump, that is how the world is supposed to work. Trump doesn’t understand that in the world there might truly be laws and rules that constrain a leader.”

Snyder noted that authoritarian tendencies often go hand in hand with impatience at such constraints. “You have to have morality and a set of institutions that escape the normal balance of administrative practice,” Snyder said. “You have to be able to lie all the time. You have to have people around you who tell you how wonderful you are all the time. You have to have institutions which don’t follow the law and instead follow some kind of law of loyalty.”

The Bullshitter-in-Chief; Vox, May 30, 2017

Matthew Yglesias, Vox; The Bullshitter-in-Chief

"The common thread of the Trumposphere is that there doesn’t need to be any common thread. One day Comey went soft on Clinton; the next day he was fired for being too hard on her; the day after that, it wasn’t about Clinton at all. The loyalist is just supposed to go along with whatever the line of the day is.

This is the authoritarian spirit in miniature, assembling a party and a movement that is bound to no principles and not even committed to following its own rhetoric from one day to the next. A “terrific” health plan that will “cover everyone” can transform into a bill to slash the Medicaid rolls by 14 million in the blink of an eye and nobody is supposed to notice or care. Anything could happen at any moment, all of it powered by bullshit."

"Counting on Nobody "Fact-Checking" It"; Blondie, March 27, 2017

Blondie; "Counting on Nobody "Fact-Checking" It"

Dan Simpson: Ethics, schmethics; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 8, 2017

Dan Simpson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 

Dan Simpson: Ethics, schmethics

"The idea that the president’s choice to be U.S. attorney general, the nation’s top law enforcement official, would lie under oath to the Senate committee considering his nomination — people who were his colleagues as senators for 20 years — is stunning and possibly a sign of just how far down the standard of ethics in Washington has descended.

Nonetheless, that is exactly what Jefferson B. Sessions, who went on to be voted into office as attorney general, did. Asked a direct question about the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian officials, he replied, “I did not have contact with the Russians.” It turns out subsequently, after the Senate had approved his nomination, that he did, on two occasions, once in his own office.

One of the problems of the descent of a nation, particularly one as large and important as the United States of America, is that the fall can occur, step by step, in the form of death by a thousand cuts. I am not saying that it is all over for us yet, but I am saying that Mr. Sessions’ lie to the senators, the position he was being considered for and the subsequent so-far refusal of President Donald Trump to fire Mr. Sessions for what he did, are grave evidence of the low state of ethics at the very top of our government."

Don’t call it post-truth. There’s a simpler word: lies; Guardian, 12/16/16

Jonathan Freedland, Guardian; Don’t call it post-truth. There’s a simpler word: lies:

"We’ve been calling this “post-truth politics” but I now worry that the phrase is far too gentle, suggesting society has simply reached some new phase in its development. It lets off the guilty too lightly. What Trump is doing is not “engaging in post-truth politics”. He’s lying.

Worse still, Trump and those like him not only lie: they imply that the truth doesn’t matter, showing a blithe indifference to whether what they say is grounded in reality or evidence...

Only in the political realm have we somehow drifted into a world in which no one can be trusted, not on questions of judgment, nor even on questions of fact. But we cannot live in such a world. Evidence, facts and reason are the building blocks of civilisation. Without them we plunge into darkness."

Media as Referee? Not Anymore; New York Times, 8/23/16

[Podcast] Michael Barbaro, New York Times; Media as Referee? Not Anymore:

"The syringe started off as a conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton’s health posted on a fringe right-wing website. It traveled to the legitimizing megaphone of prime-time cable news. And it ended, after an agonizing journey through the new realities of the campaign media, with a single phone call that debunked its entire existence. There was no syringe.

Along the way, the syringe that wasn’t revealed everything there is to know about the truth, the media and this topsy-turvy presidential campaign. On the latest episode of The Run-Up, we explore what happened to truth in this campaign and who’s to blame for the new world of truth-shading and outright falsehoods."

Clinton’s Fibs vs. Trump’s Huge Lies; New York Times, 8/6/16

Nicholas Kristof, New York Times; Clinton’s Fibs vs. Trump’s Huge Lies:

"ONE persistent narrative in American politics is that Hillary Clinton is a slippery, compulsive liar while Donald Trump is a gutsy truth-teller.

Over all, the latest CBS News poll finds the public similarly repulsed by each candidate: 34 percent of registered voters say Clinton is honest and trustworthy compared with 36 percent for Trump.

Yet the idea that they are even in the same league is preposterous. If deception were a sport, Trump would be the Olympic gold medalist; Clinton would be an honorable mention at her local Y.

Let’s investigate."

The unbearable stench of Trump’s B.S.; Washington Post, 8/4/16

Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post; The unbearable stench of Trump’s B.S. :

"Harry Frankfurt concludes that liars and truth-tellers are both acutely aware of facts and truths. They are just choosing to play on opposite sides of the same game to serve their own ends. The B.S. artist, however, has lost all connection with reality. He pays no attention to the truth. “By virtue of this,” Frankfurt writes, “bullshit is a greater enemy of truth than lies are.”

We see the consequences. As the crazy talk continues, standard rules of fact, truth and reality have disappeared in this campaign. Donald Trump has piled such vast quantities of his trademark product into the political arena that the stench is now overwhelming and unbearable."

Can mythbusters like Snopes.com keep up in a post-truth era?; Guardian, 8/1/16

Rory Carroll, Guardian; Can mythbusters like Snopes.com keep up in a post-truth era? :

"Mikkelson lists four principal misinformation sources:

1 Legitimate satire sites such as the Onion, which dupe the truly credulous, requiring occasional intervention. “No, SeaWorld isn’t drowning live elephants as part of a new attraction.” “Are the parents of teen Caitlin Teagart going to euthanise her because she is only capable of texting and rolling her eyes? False.”

2 Legitimate news organisations that regurgitate stories without checking, such as the $200 Bill Clinton haircut on Air Force One which supposedly snarled air traffic at LAX in 1993.

3 Political sites that distort, such as Breitbart.com twisting an Obama quote about the “contributions of Muslim Americans to building the very fabric of our nation” into the headline “Obama: Muslims Built ‘The Very Fabric of Our Nation’.”

4 Fake news sites fabricating click-bait stories. Such as: “Ted Cruz sent shockwaves through the Republican Party today when he announced he would endorse Donald Trump for President, but only if the GOP nominee would publicly support a ban on masturbation, (saying) without ‘swift action … the country was doomed to slide down a slippery slope of debauchery and self-satisfaction’.” Snopes sourced this to a site that mimicked ABC News to lure clicks to an underlying malware site, generating advertising revenue. It named and shamed the worst offenders earlier this year."