For those conservatives jumping all over Brian Williams it might be a good idea to check the quality of the glass their house is made out of first.

Courtesy of Salon:

When it emerged that NBC News anchor Brian Williams had misled the public for years with a harrowing account of coming under enemy fire on a military helicopter during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, observers were quick to draw comparisons with other public figures caught telling tall tales about combat experiences. Some hearkened back to Hillary Clinton’s bogus 2008 assertion that she had landed “under sniper fire” during a trip to Bosnia a dozen years earlier; in reality, video from the trip showed a smiling Clinton and her daughter walking calmly on the tarmac, with no sign of trouble whatsoever. 

There’s another figure who merits mention in this discussion, one whose serial blurring of lines between fiction and reality was a mainstay of his public career. That figure, of course, was Ronald Reagan. 

Reagan’s fibs were manifold. They included his campaign-trail tale of a “Chicago welfare queen” with 80 aliases, 30 addresses, and 12 Social Security cards, whom he alleged had claimed “over $150,000″ in government benefits. The woman whom Reagan made infamous was convicted of using only two aliases, used to collect $8,000. 

Once in office, Reagan’s deception in the Iran-Contra scandal briefly threatened his presidency. First, Reagan flatly denied wrongdoing, publicly declaring, “We did not — repeat, did not — trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we.” Months later, when subsequent revelations rendered that assertion untenable, Reagan delivered an Oval Office address in which he tried to reconcile his public claims with the factual record. “A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages,” Reagan said. “My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.” 

But Reagan’s fabrications also included whoppers about conflict zones reminiscent of those put forth by Williams and Clinton. During Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s November 1983 visit to the U.S., Reagan told Shamir that during his service in the U.S. Army film corps, he and fellow members of his unit personally shot footage of the Nazis’ concentration camps as they were liberated. Reagan would tell this story again to others, including Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal. But Reagan was never present at the camps’ liberation. Instead, he spent the war in Culver City, California, where he processed footage from the liberation of the camps.

I think compared to lying about being present during the liberation of the concentration camps in World War 2, lying about your helicopter receiving enemy fire in Iraq is small beans. 

Look I'm not defending Williams. I think that when a trusted figure  is caught fabricating stories of bravery that is newsworthy and he should suffer some blowback.

But let's face it conservatives lie like some people draw a breath. It is the most natural thing in the world for them.

One of their major right now is Ted Cruz, who has been caught telling untruths twice as often as he has been caught telling a truth, or half truth.

The same is true of Chris Christie and Rand Paul. And do we even need to include George W. Bush and Sarah Palin?

Look there are liberals liars and exaggerators as well.  (Anthony Wiener springs to mind. Pardon the pun.)

However they are not the ones gleefully calling for the destruction of a man's career based on one lie.

Nor are they the ones who have deified a man who so clearly manipulated the truth as often as dear old Ronnie.