The St. Petersburg Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning website, PolitiFact, this past Friday named Sarah Palin “death panel” allegation as the “Lie of the Year“. Palin’s lie was selected by the site’s editors after a poll of 5,000 readers demonstrated overwhelming support for the choice.

PolitiFact here recounts the lie which earned the site’s coveted “Pants on Fire” designation back when it was originally promulgated:

The former governor of Alaska had been out of the headlines since she announced her resignation on July 3; the Facebook message instantly brought her back to the political stage.

“As more Americans delve into the disturbing details of the nationalized health care plan that the current administration is rushing through Congress, our collective jaw is dropping, and we’re saying not just no, but hell no!” Palin wrote.

“The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”

The claim that House legislation contained anything resembling a “death panel” is demonstrably false. It did cause much needless anxiety, particularly among senior citizens, including my own parents, and seriously compromised the quality of the national discussion on healthcare reform.

Palin never renounced her lie. Instead she defended it, as in an interview with the National Review in November:

“To me, while reading that section of the bill, it became so evident that there would be a panel of bureaucrats who would decide on levels of health care, decide on those who are worthy or not worthy of receiving some government-controlled coverage,” she said. “Since health care would have to be rationed if it were promised to everyone, it would therefore lead to harm for many individuals not able to receive the government care. That leads, of course, to death.”

“The term I used to describe the panel making these decisions should not be taken literally,” said Palin. The phrase is “a lot like when President Reagan used to refer to the Soviet Union as the ‘evil empire.’ He got his point across. He got people thinking and researching what he was talking about. It was quite effective. Same thing with the ‘death panels.’ I would characterize them like that again, in a heartbeat.”

Whenever the ex-governor of Alaska distinguishes herself in this way, it warms our heart to step back and listen to noted Palinite and 6th District Congressman Peter Roskam’s reflection on Sarah Palin’s “centeredness”:

So much for Congressman Roskam’s judgement.