I'm not sure which Michele Bachmann holds in greater contempt; the "Democrat Party," as she always calls it (you're off by an "ic" ma'am), or the facts when they are inconvenient to her beliefs. But, happily, she doesn't have to choose when she can get the facts wrong while attacking that other party, the whatstheirnames.

So she went for the daily double and nailed it yesterday on PajamasTV. It's a long interview, and Rep. Bachmann was in fine form, defending freedom everywhichway. But she got a coupla facts wrong and, by sheer coincidence, both created false negative inferences against Dems.

The first one, with a hat tip to City Pages, was an assertion that swine flu always breaks out under Democrat(ic) presidents. She said, mighty generously, that she wasn't blaming Pres. Obama for the current outbreak (but then why is she bringing it up?), but she couldn't help but notice the coincidence that the previous outbreak occurred under Democrat(ic) Jimmy Carter. Understand please, she's absolutely not trying to associate swine flu outbreaks with Democrats, just noticing the irony. Problem, of course, was that the 1970s swine flu scare started in 1976 under Republic(an) Pres. Gerald Ford. (Not that he caused it, mindya, just noting.)

The second and more important made-up fact was Bachmann's assertion that the likely use of the reconciliation process by the Dems to push through a health care bill without facing a potential filibuster would be "unprecedented." Not at all.

There is something wrong with using procedural maneuvers (reconciliation) to get around other procedural maneuvers (filibusters) and I'd be happy to see the process simplified and streamlined. But there's nothing "unprecedented" here. As the Washington Monthly put it, reconciliation is:

"a procedure used many times in recent years, usually by Republicans. Reconciliation was used to pass welfare reform; it was used to pass Bush's tax cut plans; and more recently, GOP lawmakers even wanted to use reconciliation to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."

That last reference to ANWR seems a cheap shot, since apparently it wasn't used. But the whole Repub tantrum over the possible use of reconciliation to avoid filibusters certainly reeks of how-dare-you-do-to-us-what-we-previously-did-to-you.