Sherry F. Colb, a professor at Rutgers Law School in Newark, NJ, shares this essay at CNN today educating us as to the “three types of lies” – the insignificant lie, the harmful, material lie, and the beneficial, material lie. As a backdrop to her essay, she features Condaleeza Rice. She doesn’t actually mention any actual testimony by Rice, she just chose her at random –

“Until the middle of last week, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was engaged in a conflict with the 9/ 11 Investigation Commission over whether or not she would take an oath to tell the truth prior to voluntarily answering their questions.”

But this Colb is a sly fox. She skillfully injects a fourth type of lie – intellectual dishonesty. She makes sure it’s a clumsy one, so we can spot it right away:

Lies, however, can be far more destructive, such as — to pick a purely hypothetical example — misleading the nation into supporting a war and sending young men and women to die for a cause of which the people are unaware and may not support.

Then, this other cleverly disguised type of lie – the lie-once-removed – “many suspect” is the clue here.

Suppose that — as many suspect has already occurred with respect to the Iraq War — our executive branch officials lie to the American people in order to motivate important votes, and those lies lead to unnecessary and unwanted death and injury.

Colb also carefully explains how she lies to get her boring mother off the phone.
So, I’m going to go out on a limb here, but my general take on the article – I think Colb would consider lies told (to pick a purely hypothetical example) to support a Democratic political agenda, to be one of those “beneficial, material lies” types, like the ones told to save Jews from Nazis.

In the past few weeks, a murmer has been growing across the blogosphere that should John Kerry defeat George Bush in November, he is likely to “stay the course” in Iraq and the greater war on Islamic fascism. The comforting argument is this; despite their differences, when it comes to fundamentals about national security and foreign policy, a Bush vs Kerry administration is a Coke Vs Pepsi debate.
Now that you’ve been properly seduced…

In an interview broadcast Wednesday morning, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry defended terrorist Shiite imam Muqtada al-Sadr as a “legitimate voice” in Iraq, despite that fact that he’s led an uprising that has killed nearly 20 American GIs in the last two days.
Speaking of al-Sadr’s newspaper, which was shut down by coalition forces last week after it urged violence against U.S. troops, Kerry complained to National Public Radio, “They shut a newspaper that belongs to a legitimate voice in Iraq.”
In the next breath, however, the White House hopeful caught himself and quickly changed direction. “Well, let me … change the term ‘legitimate.’ It belongs to a voice – because he has clearly taken on a far more radical tone in recent days and aligned himself with both Hamas and Hezbollah, which is a sort of terrorist alignment.”

Yeah. No difference at all, really.
Hat tip – Inoperable Terran
update- Hugh Hewitt covers the non-coverage of this in the big media

This election is about the war.�Yesterday Kerry said a lot of things about the war, some outrageous, some incoherent, some contradicting other statements he has made.� Voters have a right to hear or read Kerry on the crucial subject, even if pro-Kerry reporters and editors suspect that these quotes may not go down well with the public. The Kerry interviews were not hard to come by. I had them and had transcribed and posted the key excerpts by 2:30 PM Pacific time yesterday. No wonder Americans don’t trust the media.� A combination of terrible news judgment, laziness, and bias has infected the coverage of the election, and there’s no excusing this failure on the part of the “objective press.”

Well, wasn’t that clever? And most everyone thought Morissette was making a statement about censorship in the US. Even Drudge – Morissette, hosting Canada’s annual music awards, said the stunt, in which she appeared in a provocative skin-hugging body-suit was intended to expose US “censorship.” and quotes her as saying “They’re in an era when they’re scared, when there’s lots of fear.” I’m sure she said something to that effect. (I didn’t really pay attention, as I was getting up to turn it off.)

But, of course, the tit ‘n bush suit wasn’t about censorship at all. It was about the number one source of angst in Canada – that peculiar inferiority complex we have about our cousins to the south, that we’ve code-named “Canadian identity”.
You see, Alanis Morrisette would still be playing shopping malls if it weren’t for the American market. Nickelback would be slogging the bar scene in Vancouver. Avril Lavigne would be catching the bus to her job at Wendy’s. (And they’d make her tie back that hair.)
One cannot become a bona fide Canadian superstar without gaining the approval of the USA. Not that the Americans give a damn – we do. Nobody cares about Canadian bands if they haven’t had a gig on the Grammys or scored a number one song – a chart topper makes us positively giddy. It just kills these people to admit it.
So, chubby little smirk, desperate to prove she isn’t one of them, (though of course, we all are) – decides that dressing up in Spandex and throwing a little hypocrisy around is the way to make a statement about Canadian superiority. That’s right. Not censorship at all. Throwing off a bathrobe in a faux moment of exposure makes us better than you.
Should be good for about a week of smug.
Don’t believe me? Try mentioning that “only the Europeans and the French” wear visors on their hockey helmets during a CBC Hockey Night In Canada broadcast. Then, get back to me about the freedom of the Canadian airwaves.