"Huury! There's another four alarm fire in Rep. Bachmann's pants!!"

“I’m happy to say I don’t think that I’ve said anything inaccurate in any of the debates. And I’m extremely grateful for that. It’s a high-profile stage and so I’m grateful that I don’t think I’ve made a blunder.”

—Rep. Michele Bachmann on NPR’s Morning Edition. Bachmann saying she has never said anything inaccurate is like Steve Martin saying that he has never said anything funny.

This quote occurred on November 25, and I missed it. It came to mind because the Washington Post did a long feature on Bachmann today as it profiled the Republican presidential contenders who haven’t been fingered by past paramours. As part of the coverage, Post “Fact checker” Glenn Kessler noted that of all the candidates, Bachmann has made the most statements that rated four “Pinocchios”, his rating system for dishonesty. Four puts a politician in the “liar, liar, pants on fire” category, and Bachmann’s metaphorical pants are always smoldering.

I think I missed this statement because I assumed the jig was up with Bachmann, and I could look elsewhere for topics. There are some public figures—Al Sharpton, Howard Stern, Sen. Harry Reid, Michael Savage, Joy Behar, Bill Maher (gasp for breath), Bill O’Reilly, Donald Trump, Mark Levin, and others—who violate principles of honesty, civility and fairness in their statements so regularly that I can just check their most recent comments on a slow news day and have something juicy to write about. But with these regular ethics violators there is little point in doing so. Their fans are so biased or corrupted that they are beyond reaching with reasoned analysis, and any objective, ethically grounded observer knows all about these culprits already. Bachmann is on the list; she is a charter member, in fact.

Then I listened yesterday to pundits talk about how Bachmann “couldn’t be counted out,” what with Newt a combustible front-runner (George Will’s applying to Newt Winston Churchill’s description of a rival as ” a bull who carries his own china shop with him” was especially apt), and how she “performed well” in the last debate. My goodness…what does it take to show that a candidate is untrustworthy today? A violent knife attack on a moderator? Proof of armed robbery?  Michele Bachmann lies. When she isn’t lying, she’s spouting half-truths and rumors. While Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Sarah Palin say ignorant things because they can’t be bothered to take public discourse seriously, Michele Bachmann says ignorant things because if a half-baked fact fits her hard-edged world view, she believes it. Then, when it it is shown to be false, she denies that she meant what she obviously meant…and her supporters smile and nod.

A prime case on point was another Bachmann statement that I missed, from a debate in September. Moderator Chris Wallace asked her about her repeated comments that the HPV vaccine is “a very dangerous drug,” which included, though Wallace didn’t mention it,  a Fox News appearance during which she cited a discussion she had with a mother after a recent debate:

“The problem is, is it comes with some very significant consequences. There’s a woman who came up crying to me tonight after the debate. She said her daughter was given that vaccine. She told me her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result of that vaccine. There are very dangerous consequences.”

Bachmann’s answer to Wallace:

“I didn’t make that claim, nor did I make that statement. Immediately after the debate, a mother came up to me and she was visibly shaken and heartbroken because of what her daughter had gone through, so I only related what her story was.”

Of course, she did make that claim, many times. It’s on videotape. And if Bachmann wasn’t citing the conversation with the mother to bolster the claims she says she never made, why did she mention it? Would she have told Fox News about any claim made by a weeping mother, no matter how unlikely or attenuated? “Aliens took my child!” “The dingo ate my baby!” “I am the Lizard Queen!” She cited the conversation as evidence for her position that the vaccine was dangerous. Bachmann’s not even a skilled liar, a trait which has some utility in the presidency—ask Bill Clinton.

Michele Bachmann lies, and lies about lying. Whether she is most unqualified GOP candidate for president is a tough call, but she is, along with Newt Gingrich, the most spectacularly obviously unqualified.

Now I want to be able to ignore her for the rest of the year.