She's leaving on a jet-plane

The Washington Times (no stranger to making baseless claims against liberals and Democrats) ran a story this week indicating that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) inquired about the use of a military plane for trips with her staff back to her home in San Francisco. Unsurprisingly, this set of the right wing echo chamber (H/T Talking Points Memo):

DOBBS: Lisa, let me see if I've got this right. She wants a plane that accommodates 42 people, private stateroom. And the reason is because she wants to be able to go nonstop from Washington to the West Coast? My goodness, she could have done that in the plane that Hastert was using (italics added).

SYLVESTER: That's exactly correct, Lou. You've got that. It would be 42 people, and clearly she won't be the only one on this plane. She wants to have members of the congressional delegation. And her critics will say, look, this is a very nice perk that she can share with her colleagues and use as leverage, should she need to.

DOBBS: Well, it's really a fascinating thing: 42. She could take a circus with her, for crying out loud. All right, thank you very much, Lisa Sylvester.

The interesting thing about this story is that...it's not true. Think Progress has the goods here. Basically, the Sergent at Arms of the House inquired about the possibility of military transport for Pelosi (former House speaker Denny Hassert had access to a military plane; the consequences of living in post-9/11 America) and a larger plane was needed for Pelosi since she would be traveling non-stop from D.C. to San Francisco...just a little bit further than the trip from D.C. to Chicago.

Never let a little fact checking stand in the way of a sensational story.