Scabrous Country: With special guest host Pat "Screech" Buchanan

Sometimes it's not the lying itself that gets to me. It's that the same people keep lying to me. Or that the same lie gets told to me. And sometimes it's all three.

Pat Buchanan, filling in for the stupefying Joe Scarborough, is screeching:

Are federal judges out of control?
Are we living under a judicial dictatorship?
Are cable news programs hyperbolic?

Actually, the last question was mine.

And if it's judicial dictatorship, it must be Terri Schiavo. Unless it's gay marriage, gay flag-burning, or gay creation scientists. No, tonight it's definitely about Schiavo because Screech lets this one fly:

BUCHANAN: We are talking about the federal judges. . . . And we are talking about the fact that the entire Congress of the United States came back, as did President Bush, and overwhelmingly passed a law to say, let‘s take this up, and to have a re-de novo hearing of this case at the federal level, and the judges refused to do it.

Here's the lie: It was not the entire Congress of the United States that passed the bill. Enough representatives in the House voted on the Schiavo bill to give it marginal credibility. But the Senate?

The Senate approved the measure on an unchallenged voice vote during a rare Palm Sunday session that came amid charges of cynical political maneuvering. Only three members were on the floor and the bill's prime sponsor, Republican Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida, served as presiding officer. link)

Buchanan and his fellow screecheteers desperately need this "entire Congress of the United States" myth. It is a crucial lie of omission that both intentionally and inattentively gets perpetuated. Otherwise people might be lobbing accusations about a "procedural dictatorship." Not that you'd hear about it on cable news programs anyway.