This morning's Intelligencer editorial follows the same playbook as last Monday's editorial on the WASPs : pick a topic that was not covered originally by the "newspaper," misinterpret and lie about what happened, and then conclude that it's all the Democrats' fault.

Today's "Ryan Should Take Hard Line in House" tells us that, despite efforts by the Republican to pass important spending legislation, the Democrats added a totally unrelated amendment into the bill which caused it to be rejected. Here is the editorial's description:

Ryan had pledged he would exert less control over the process of moving bills through the House. His decision made it easier to amend bills.

On Thursday, Democrats led by Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., did just that. One of 12 spending bills Congress must approve for the government was up for a vote. This one involved money for energy and water projects.

At the last minute, Pelosi's forces inserted an amendment they claimed was to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from discrimination.

With that totally unrelated amendment in it, the spending bill was rejected by a 305-112 vote in the House.

To state the obvious, amendments are simply not "inserted" into a bill -- they must be approved by the majority before becoming a part of a bill. The vote on the amendment, according to the Associated Press, was 223 to 195 in favor. Since the Republicans have a majority in the House, they could easily have defeated the amendment. They chose not to. The 223 votes in favor of the amendment also means that a number of Republicans voted for the amendment. (The New York Times puts that number at 43.)

To get more specific: the editorial claims the amendment was "unrelated" to the main bill. That's not what the original AP story concluded:

Democrats overwhelmingly opposed the bill over a GOP provision they said defends North Carolina's transgender bathroom law and thus allows discrimination against the LGBT community.

But despite what the Democrats said, our editorial writer doesn't believe them and he/she somehow knows the Democrat's true motives:

Democrat leaders knew their action would kill the spending bill. Why did they take it?

Not to defend the LGBT community - but to gain more influence over spending in every area of the government.

Once again motives are ascribed to Democrats without a shred of evidence offered in support.

Finally, the editorial asserts:

The amendment Thursday was a "poison pill" intended to kill the energy and water spending bill. Want proof? Many Democrats who voted for the amendment voted against the bill itself.

Sorry, that does not prove that it was a "poison pill." I may be against a bill but I would certainly vote for amendments that make the bill less distasteful. In this case, I can see a number of Democrats saying that this is a bad bill overall but maybe we can approve an amendment that lessens the overall harm. (Just in case the bill passes.)

Once again, and not unlike its description of West Virginia's budgetary crisis, our local "newspaper" finds a way to blame Democrats for a Republican failure. As I read the New York Times conclusion about this Republican fiasco, I couldn't help applying it to what is currently happening in Charleston:

As lawmakers headed off for a week-long Memorial Day recess, Mr. Ryan was left to blame Democrats for the failure of a Republican bill in a chamber with its largest Republican majority since the 1920s.

Yes, blame the Democrats even if it means rewriting (in this case, a polite term for "lying about") the history of what happened.