Bobby Lied But Nobody Died Except Maybe Jindal

It appears that Bobby Jindal made up his key anecdote about how he and the New Orleans sheriff stood up to rigid federal bureaucrats during Katrina.

For those who don't have photographic memories, here's the anecdote.

During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office, I'd never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: "Well, I'm the sheriff and if you don't like it you can come and arrest me!" I asked him: "Sheriff, what's got you so mad?" He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters.

The boats were all lined up ready to go -- when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn't go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, "Sheriff, that's ridiculous." And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: "Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!" Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.

After Jindal's altogether disastrous speech, Daily Kos and TPM--God bless the left-wing media--started questioning whether this key story. Specifically, they started questioning whether Jindal could have been at the Sheriff's "make-shift office" at that particular time because "no news reports we could find place Jindal in the affected area at the specific time at issue."

And it turned out that Bobby Jindal wasn't there at all. Now Jindal's office is claiming that he overheard Sheriff Lee tell this story over the phone "days later."

I wouldn't be surprised if that line didn't pan out either.

Unlike the case of Bush and Cheney, Bobby Jindal's lying didn't result in more than 100,000 deaths. But it's hard to imagine him as the candidate of a national political party anytime soon.

Maybe Jindal should run on the Ayn Rand ticket instead.