Libby Indictments

I've just read through the Libby indictments and two quotations spring to mind. The one most people will immediately think of is by Rabbie Burns:

Oh what a tangled web we weave

When first we practise to deceive

Although that's not entirely appropriate, for this is far from the first time Scooter has practised deceiving people. Deception always results in a tangled web no matter how much you practise. The better quotation is by Robert Green Ingersoll. He was a lawyer. The first lawyer in the US, and probably in the world, to introduce handwriting analysis. He made an otherwise unimpeccable case with his handwriting analysis but his expert witness botched the ink analysis and the jury went against him (in my opinion, wrongly so). It was in that case that Ingersoll said this:

There is this beautiful peculiarity in nature - a lie never fits a fact, never. You only fit a lie with another lie, made for the express purpose, because you can change a lie but you can't change a fact, and after a while the time comes when the last lie you tell has to be fitted to a fact, and right there is a bad joint; consequently you must test the statements of people who say they saw, not by what they say but by other facts, by the surroundings, by what are called probabilities; by the naturalness of the statement.

All the lies that Scooter told failed to fit with the facts. In many cases, the lies he told one person didn't even fit the lies he told another person.