PolitiFact is spinning like a top.

A lot has been written about how PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year" is true. It turns out that in addition to asserting something true was false (lying!), PolitiFact omitted something major about the source of the lie statement that Republicans voted to end Medicare.

As Dave Weigel explains, the statement originated in a piece of nonpartisan policy analysis in the Wall Street Journal, "that simmering pot of liberal bias," in which Naftali Bendavid wrote that the Ryan plan "would essentially end Medicare."

In subsequent Democratic spin and ads, this was the citation for the claim that the Ryan plan "would essentially end Medicare." Strangely, PolitiFact never mentions this original, reported analysis. The fact-checkers claim that "Democrats pounced" on Ryan, that "the Democrats were turning the tables" on the spin, and that the lie is "the Democrats’ claim." No mention of how a non-partisan analysis of the bill, by a congressional reporter, first made the "ending" claim. Why is this important? Because Politifact did not make this judgment in some hermetic chamber, free from politics. Their analysis is clear: They are rebutting a political attack.

So PolitiFact ignored not just the truth of the statement it evaluated but the source it initially came from. Then, perhaps worse, this organization that is allegedly focused on cutting through spin to truth, blatantly ignored the truth to create their own heavily politicized spin. As Weigel writes, "PolitiFact's argument ... is that a description is not 'true' if someone stands to lose from the description." Or at least, not if the someone who stands to lose has the pushback capacity of the Republican party.