It's a Pattern

"That depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."  - Bill Clinton

Saw a headline that said that Nancy Pelosi "backs up" Harry Reid on his "some guy told me Mitt Romney didn't pay taxes for 10 years" campaign.  Pelosi objects to people calling Reid a liar because ... now get this ... "some guy did tell him that".  She's not backing up the truth of the allegation.   She's backing up that someone told Reid that.

Actually, she's not even doing that.  She's saying you don't know it's a lie, because you weren't privy to the conversation.

See, look:

“Harry Reid made a statement that is true. Somebody told him. It is a fact,” Pelosi told The Huffington Post in a Sunday interview. 

Asked to respond to Priebus calling Reid “a dirty liar” over the situation, Pelosi initially responded, “Who?” She went on to say that Priebus doesn’t know what he’s talking about since he wasn’t part of Reid’s conversations.

“Well he doesn’t know that,” Pelosi said. “Harry Reid is a person who is, as we know, A, is a fighter, B, he wouldn’t say this unless it was true that somebody told him that.”  

 We're playing a little game here.  I can play it, too.

I will call Ann Romney and tell her, on condition of anonymity, that Barack Obama did not pay income taxes for 10 years.   I will tell her that I'm certain of it, and that it can be proven.   Then, see, if Ann goes public with this and anybody calls her a liar, she can say, "I'm not lying, somebody did tell me that."   And ... here's the kicker, if it finally gets back to me and I'm uncovered and asked to produce, I can tell them, "hey, I'm not  lying.  Barack Obama did not pay any income taxes until long after he was 10 years old."

How cute.   How utterly, disingenuously cute.

Of course, what they're very cleverly trying to do is get the Romneys to release more information to them so that their campaign can comb through it for opportunities to make innuendo and allegations to club Romney over the head with for the next 90 or so days ... perhaps even using language that is technically correct.   Because he can't campaign on his record.

This is taking "weasel words" to a whole new level.