Among bloggers, a recent topic of fascination concerns the question--"who is Ellie Light?"

Miss Light managed to get her letter to the editor published in 65 newspapers to date, each featuring a local address, which makes Ellie Light a property owner of the same rank as Oprah or Cindy McCain, or a sock puppet for the Obama administration.

If you read the letter, and her responses to reporter questions (by email), you get the growing sense that the latter case is the likely one.

You can read her letter here, and subsequent followups here and here.

The initial letter is the crystallization of a product from the Obama administration rhetoric factory--a logical fallacy called a complex question. A complex question is two conjoined propositions, one which is eminently reasonable, and the other dubious, controversial or just plain crazy. If you agree with the reasonable proposition then you are by implication, agreeing with the dubious one as well, which is how you get poll results that say that 53% of Utahns think we don't pay enough taxes. If you disagree, then your opposition is characterized as being contrary to the reasonable proposition rather than the crazy stuff.

In the Ellie Light (lightbringer--get it?) letter, that proposition is structured this way:

During his campaign, Obama clearly said that an economy that took eight years to break couldn't be fixed in a year...

1. Bush spent his presidency wrecking the economy. 2. It can't be fixed overnight. Those are two propositions, one which is complete bullshit, and the other a reasonable argument.

This kind of political dirty trick isn't the casual product of a concerned citizen writing the 'local' paper to express their views. Its the deliberate construct of political operatives.

Spin is simply an argument that favors your position. the "it can't be fixed overnight' argument is spin. The other is just garden variety deception, and in my view, that is the real heart of the matter with Barack Obama and the Democrats.

Scott Brown's act of political jiu jitsu occurred in under sixty days, during which we saw the administration and the Democrat Congress engage in some of the most egregious, anti-democratic and just plain immoral behavior that I can ever recall during my lifetime. The payoff of Ben Nelson, the creation of unions as a special class of citizen immune to a tax that applies broadly to the rest of Americans, the flat out lies of Janet Napolitano in the wake of an attempted terrorist attack.

As bad as the proposed policies of this administration have been, its the sleaze that has really destroyed their political capitol, and the Ellie Light episode illustrates how deeply entrenched that culture is. The decision to engaged in wicked behavior has become a reflex for these people.

That is why Ellie Light's little prank has become a story worth paying attention to.