Steve Benen, writing for the Maddow Blog, has compiled a list of 30 flagrant lies told by Mitt Romney this week alone. It’s an eye-opening collection of falsehoods so egregious that it’s mind-boggling that he has been permitted to get away with it. All Al Gore had to do was be misquoted about his participation in promoting the Internet and his name became synonymous with “stretching” the truth. But Romney seems to have no limit for deliberate deception and he is still taken seriously by the press who should be holding him accountable.

Here are just the first 10 items on Benen’s list:

1. In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Romney claimed it’s fiscally responsible to eliminate the entirety of the Affordable Care Act: “It saves $100 billion a year to get rid of it.”
   
   
   That’s the opposite of the truth. According to the CBO and other nonpartisan budget estimates, killing the law would make the deficit go up, not down, and would cost, not save, the country hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years.

2. In the same interview, Romney said, “I think a lot of people forgetting is there is only one president in history that’s cut Medicare by $500 billion and that is President Obama.”
   
   
   Romney says this a lot. He’s not telling the truth.

3. Romney also said, “I see people holding up signs, ‘Don’t touch my Medicare.’ It’s like, hey, I’m not touching your Medicare.”
   
   
   Romney endorsed Paul Ryan’s House Republican Budget plan, which ends the Medicare program and replaces it with a private voucher scheme.

4. In the same interview, Romney said President Obama has “never had the experience of working in the private sector.”
   
   
   Actually, that’s not true. Obama worked at a private-sector law firm before entering public service.

5. Romney also told Hannity Obama went on “an apology tour” in his first year.
   
   
   As Romney surely knows by now, he’s lying.

6. Romney, trying to talk about foreign policy, said Syria is Iran’s “route to the sea.”
   
   
   Iran doesn’t share a border with Syria, and Iran already borders two bodies of water.

7. At a campaign event in Stratham, New Hampshire, Romney claimed, “Bill Clinton and so many other mainstream Democrats are revolting against the backward direction President Obama is taking his party and our country.”
   
   
   In reality, Bill Clinton supports the president’s re-election and recently said a Romney presidency would be “calamitous for our country and the world.”

8. At an event in Cornwall, Pennsylvania, shared an anecdote about a local optometrist who was forced to fill out a “33-page” change-of-address form — several times — at the post office.
   
   
   There is no such change-of-address form.

9. At the same event, Romney said Obama is “taking away” scholarships and charter schools for “kids in Washington, D.C.”
   
   
   This has become a line in Romney’s stump speech, but it isn’t in any way true.

10. Romney also claimed, “This president has put together almost as much public debt as all the prior presidents combined.”
    
    
    That’s a lie.

There are 20 more lies like this in the past week, and Benen has chronicled 22 weeks of further fabrications. This is not the typical behavior of a politician, who can be expected to “interpret” information in self-serving ways, or to waver from veracity from time to time. This is evidence of a clinical psychosis. Romney has been rated as untruthful 54 times by PolitiFact, and 13 of those were “Pants-on-Fire” lies. Is it just me, or shouldn’t this be newsworthy?

His children must be so proud. This Father’s Day Mitt Romney is traipsing around the Mid-West in a bus, doing his best to avoid the press while connecting with the American people – well, at least the Bovine-Americans who came out to support his candidacy and chew their cud.

While on his “Every Cow Counts” bus tour, Romney consoled the rain-soaked voters in Ohio by saying of his hope to replace Obama that the country is about to get “a little whiter.” Actually, he may said “brighter,” but his Tea Party constituents know to translate it.

However, the real news that Romney made today was that, in addition to being a flip-flopping Etch-a-Sketcher, he is pathological liar. And I’m not even referring to his dishonest claims about President Obama, his misrepresentations about the economy, or his failure to be truthful about his proposed plans for a Romney administration. What’s really alarming is that he can’t even tell the truth about himself.

Today he told CSPAN that, “I didn’t go to law school, I didn’t practice law, but I like the idea of arguing points back and forth…” Somebody better tell Harvard Law School to demand their diploma back because Romney’s web site says that “After graduating from Brigham Young University in 1971, he earned dual degrees from Harvard Law and Harvard Business School.”

Then on Face the Nation, Romney told Bob Schieffer, “Bob, I don’t have a political career. I served as governor for four years. I spent my life in the private sector.” However, Romney began his non-existent political career in 1994, running for (and losing) the U.S. Senate against Ted Kennedy. Then he ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002. After one term, he ran for (and lost) the GOP nomination for president in 2008. Finally, he is currently in the midst of his second campaign for president. Somebody should tell Romney that eighteen years of mostly losing doesn’t mean that you haven’t had a political career, it means you had a “bad” political career. (h/t @LOLGOP).

Didn’t go to law school? No political career? These are flat out lies. Twelve years ago, all Al Gore had to do was have one misreported comment about “creating the Internet” get traction in the press and his name became synonymous with “stretching” the truth. Now Romney is telling outright falsehoods about his own past. Will the media hold him accountable? Will he at least become the butt of a few jokes? When someone lies about things they don’t have to lie about, it suggests that it’s just a part of their character. How can anyone take him seriously when he is so brazenly dishonest about himself?

[Update] The quote of Romney about law school was originally reported by ABC News, and that report has since been edited. I located video of Romney on CSPAN and it sounds like he first said that he “didn’t go to law school” and later corrected himself.

One of the best known components of Mitt Romney’s Etch-a-Sketch candidacy is his epic flip-flop on the issue of abortion. In his 1994 campaign for the senate in Massachusetts, Romney was an ardent pro-choice advocate. It was a position he vigorously defended in a debate with his opponent Ted Kennedy. His remarks could have come straight from a Planned Parenthood pamphlet:

“I have my own beliefs, and those beliefs are very dear to me. One of them is that I do not impose my beliefs on other people. Many, many years ago, I had a dear, close family relative that was very close to me who passed away from an illegal abortion. It is since that time that my mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter. And you will not see me wavering on that.”

So much for wavering. Romney is now a staunchly pro-life conservative, but the catalyst for his original opinion is worthy of exploration. Romney has never publicly identified the “close family relative” to whom he referred in the debate, but Salon published an article last year that recounted her sad experience as an unwed, pregnant woman in the years prior to Roe v. Wade. She was the younger sister of Romney’s brother-in-law, and was engaged to be married. However, her pregnancy was likely a source of shame and the whole matter was hushed up presumably to preserve the reputation of the family, including Romney’s father who was governor of Michigan at the time.

After the debate, Romney affirmed the position he had taken by saying that it “obviously makes one see that regardless of one’s beliefs about choice, that you would hope it would be safe and legal.” Apparently that observation is not so obvious anymore.

The matter might not have made much of a stir but for the fact that it was raised again today by the National Enquirer, whose typically sensationalized headline screamed “Mitt Romney Backstreet Abortion Shocker.”

Regardless of the hyperbole of the source, the facts were all present in Salon’s earlier article. Now that the story is out there, it is fair to inquire as to how Romney feels today about the ordeal of his deceased relative. While the loss of a loved one should never become fodder for political gamesmanship, how such experiences shape the values of a candidate are highly relevant. If her loss had such a profound impact on him, even thirty years later when he was running for the senate, does he no longer feel that she, or any other women in her position, ought to have access to safe and legal medical attention?

Since Romney’s current position is to turn back the clock to a time when women had no alternative but the back alley procedures that were often fatal, can he say today that he is satisfied with the fate that his young relative suffered; that it was merely the consequence of her choice; that a young woman today, perhaps another relative, should be subject to the same fate were she to make the same choice?

Romney was once driven by his grief to make an unwavering commitment to never force his beliefs on others. Is he through with grieving? Is he comfortable with the grief that other families will suffer if his promise to repeal Roe v. Wade is fulfilled? Someone should ask Romney these questions.

A couple of days ago I posted an article detailing how Mitt Romney is Protecting America From The Scourge Of Firefighters, Police, And Teachers. I wrote in part that…

“Mitt Romney has boldly come out against big government and its coddling of superfluous bureaucrats that drain our nation of scarce resources. And Romney courageously puts names to these bloodsucking parasites who provide no discernible benefit to society.”

Today, rather than sensibly walking back the absurd position that America needs fewer teachers, firefighters, and police, Romney’s campaign doubled down. One of his top surrogates, John Sununu, even refused to characterize Romney’s remarks as a mistake:

“People ought to stop jumping on it as a gaffe and understand that there is real wisdom in the comment.”

Since the Romney camp is so proud of their latest pronouncement, I thought I’d pitch in by creating a campaign poster to help them promote their new initiative.

I presume we’ll soon be seeing this everywhere as the Romney campaign seeks to spread the word about his commitment to reducing the deficit while increasing crime, illiteracy, and the death toll from fires and medical emergencies.