Gina Haspel, the President Donald Trump-backed acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, appears very likely to get the job. Since May 9, when the Senate Intelligence Committee began questioning her, it was embarrassingly clear that “national security” concerns would not allow her to be specific about her key role in running secret prisons (called “black sites”) in several locations all over the world that specialized in torturing alleged terrorists.

Leid Stories discusses Haspel successfully diverted attention away from her role in the torture program.

On May 7, Leid Stories did a commentary titled, “The Always-Lying President Just Keeps On Lying,” noting: “He lies about big things and small. He lies to make himself look good, and others bad. He even lies about lying. There is no hope, it seems, that the lying will stop, but President Trump’s lies are quite consequential; his lying ways have caught on in his administration.”

Well, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg ran with the theme in a commencement speech he delivered at Rice University on May 12. Without calling any names, he talked about the “epidemic of dishonesty” that has entrenched itself in American politics and society, and warned that, left unchecked and unchallenged, it will destroy democracy.