McConnell stopped me there and said: "Of course, that's not accurate. But they didn't say as a matter of constitutional interpretation. I'm sure that if we passed a statute, they probably wouldn't strike it down. But that was left to us.

"With regard to disclosure, you'd have to go back to the 1980s to find the time when I suggested -- and I did, and I was wrong about it, and I've been correct for 25 years now. I don't know how far back you have to go. You have to go back to the 1980s to find the time that I suggested that disclosure of 501(c)(4)s was a good idea. I made a mistake. I was wrong. I've been consistent for 25 years."

So let's see how consistent McConnell has been. It is true that in the past he went beyond rhetorical support for disclosure of all sorts. In fact, as the Lexington Herald-Leader has noted, in 1990, McConnell "pledged to introduce a bill that would require full disclosure of donors to multi-candidate political action committees." In 1996, "McConnell supported public disclosure of all election-related spending, including spending by independent groups and contributions to political parties." In 1997, McConnell published an op-ed in the Herald-Leader, writing, "Public disclosure of campaign contributions and spending should be expedited so voters can judge for themselves what is appropriate."

In June 2000, in the Meet the Press segment I mentioned in my question to him, McConnell said, "Republicans are in favor of disclosure. There's a serious constitutional question, whether you can require people engaged in what's called issue advocacy to disclose. But if you're going to do that, and the Senate voted to do that, and I'm prepared to go down that road, then it needs to be meaningful disclosure, Tim. 527s are just a handful of groups. We need to have real disclosure. And so what we ought to do is broaden the disclosure to include at least labor unions and tax-exempt business associations and trial lawyers so that you include the major political players in America. Why would a little disclosure be better than a lot of disclosure?"

In 2007, in another op-ed in the Herald-Leader, McConnell supported an amendment to an ethics bill because it "would require organizations filing complaints before the Senate Ethics Committee to disclose their donors so the public could have more transparency."

Let's see now, 1990 was ... carry the two, 23 years ago. 1996 was 17 years ago. 2000 was 13 years ago. (What about 2007? Of course, it was about donors to groups challenging senators' ethics, not for campaign-related donors. But McConnell's whole rationale for now opposing disclosure is that it can be used to punish the donors -- so punishment is OK if you are challenging the ethics of McConnell or his colleagues, but verboten if you are contributing to American Crossroads GPS? Hmm.) In any case, each of these examples is less than 25 years ago. Some are a lot less. I don't know if McConnell has problems with basic arithmetic or was just being disingenuous. I just report. You decide.