One of my political acquaintances shows more grit than I do. She listens to Rush Limbaugh. I lack the mettle for such cultural slumming.

We could have a contest: name one person or group that has ever dispensed more hocus pocus in high falutin’ terms to the already stupid masses than our own native son. Limbaugh founded the Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. To use a term like Advanced Conservative Studies is as nonsensical as promoting Advanced Thumb Sucking.

What would you learn at the Institute? Gems like this one? “There are more acres of forestland in America today than when Columbus discovered the continent in 1492.”

Now we come to the dilemma always faced by progressives: how to deal with liars like Rush. Tell a few whoppers yourself? Nah, they got forty years practice on us. And anyway, it would be immoral.

But merely telling the truth doesn’t always get the job done. Truth lacks the drama of lies. Obama’s latest gambit at controlling Republican lies in Missouri is the Barack Obama Truth Squad. Obama has asked prominent Missouri Democrats to make it their business to publicly refute ads that lie or mislead people.  

RBH pointed out that Matt Blunt is moaning about the Big Brother state that Obama’s Truth Squad exemplifies:

The group includes prosecutors from St. Louis (Robert P. McCulloch), Dunklin (Steve Sokoloff), Lafayette (Page Bellamy), Cass (Teresa Hensley), Clay (Dan White), Ripley (Chris Miller), Audrain (Jason Lamb) and Jackson (Jim Kanatzar) counties volunteering to be surrogates for Obama on their own time.

Blunt’s accusation that the prosecutors will take Republican ad makers to court is itself a lie. Prominent Democrats on the squad are simply working on their own time to get the truth out there. And what’s more, that’s nothing more than what McCain’s campaign has done:

By the way, a quick surf of the Internet found a McCain Truth Squad in New Hampshire, formed last January, that included several public officials with prosecutorial powers, including the state attorney general.

Considering the number of lies Obama faces from Republicana (including Rush and McCain’s own “truth squads”), RBH summed it up: “[W]e need a lot of people to tell the truth.”