Liar liar pants on fire

Who knew? Until I started researching for this post, I had no idea that William Blake, the poet, was the likely source of this colorful and catchy phrase. In his 1810 poem, The Liar, he phrases it somewhat more elegantly: Deceiver, dissembler/Your trousers are alight. In any event, this colorful phrase comes to mind in this campaign season. The Tampa Bay Times maintains a useful non-partisan site called PolitiFact that fact checks the candidates' claims, with ratings on a truth-o-meter that has a setting called Pants-on-fire for the most outrageously untrue claims.