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January 26, 1998. President Clinton looked the nation in the eye and spoke the words that will one day appear in the first paragraph of his obituary — I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.

It was a lie. Republicans everywhere feigned acute moral outrage over this assault on the "rule of law." Clinton was impeached, but not convicted.

September 30, 2003. President Bush spoke about the investigation just launched by the Justice Department into the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity. He said, "If there's leaks out of my administration, I want to know who it is." And if that wasn't clear enough, he added:

I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action.

Those, too, were lies, according to one Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

A president has the authority to declassify information — by making it available to everyone. But when Libby leaked information about a classified National Intelligence Estimate document to Judith Miller and only Judith Miller, it apparently became miraculously declassified, simply because the president authorized the leak.

Maureen Dowd calls this the Immaculate Declassification:

If the administration were seriously trying to declassify something in the national interest, wouldn't it have President Bush explain his decision or have his Scottish terrier yip it out from the podium, rather than having Scooter whisper it in Judy's ear?

Oh, and by the way, at Friday's press conference, poor Scott McClellan had one hell of time trying to explain why, when he announced back in 2003 that the NIE document was "officially declassified today," that he made the announcement ten days after Libby leaked the information to Miller. Doesn't that mean the NIE was still classified when Libby leaked it, the questioner wanted to know?

You can read Scotty's pained double-talking and back-peddling here.

Clinton barely survived his lie. And if there is a God in heaven and justice in America, Bush will not survive his.