Paul Krugman writes on the meaning of Paul Ryan’s lying about his marathon time. It fits with Ryan’s dictating inputs for the CBO analysis of Ryan’s budget, then claiming the CBO rated it. “It’s like sneaking into a marathon near the finish line, then claiming victory.”

Mitt Romney clearly wants the issue of his tax returns to go away. At the same time he adamantly refuses to do the one thing that would make the issue go away: release more returns. So Romney’s newest strange attempt to get the media to drop the issue without him actually providing any real transparency is to claim he has looked at his tax returns for us and we should take his word that he paid at least 13 percent in taxes every year.

It appears not only is irony lost on Mitt Romney but it’s also lost on the so called “fact checkers” at PolitiFact. The organization took a look at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s claim that someone connected to Bain Capital informed him it is unlikely Romney paid any taxes for a decade. Politifact could find no proof that someone didn’t say this to Reid nor any proof that Romney did pay taxes, but it still declared Reid’s statement a “pants on fire.”

At last night’s GOP presidential debate, after the candidates all took turns blaming the Bush Administration big gubmint for the financial crisis, John Harwood asked Newt what he did to earn $300,000 from Freddie & Fannie in 2006.