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False in One, False in All
by Sheldon Richman, July 14, 2003

When I was a newspaper reporter covering the criminal courts in Pennsylvania, lawyers always told juries they were entitled to apply this old legal principle to any witness: falsis in unum, falsis in omnibus — false in one thing, false in all things. This means that if jurors determined that a witness was untruthful in one material statement, they were justified in dismissing the witness’s entire testimony.

If juries are entitled to do this, so, I submit, are the American people with respect to presidents, even President Bush. ...