Truth be told, can Panzer be believed?
10:41 PM 1/29/04

Would state Senate Majority Leader Mary Panzer know the truth if it marched up and bit her on the butt? <

Panzer, R-West Bend, has been caught telling a whopper for the second time. The first was when she lied on her resume about having a college degree, an offense that would have gotten her fired from many lesser jobs. <

Her most recent departure from the truth involves her late mother's Cadillac, not to mention an abuse of her office. Let's tackle the abuse first: When Panzer, in Florida over the Christmas holidays, discovered that the registration and plates on her mother's car had expired, she called back to her Capitol office and got two aides to spend part of their workday renewing the plates for her. <

And that's when she began stretching the truth. <

First, she claimed the aides were working on their own time. In the middle of the day? Yeah, right. <

Then she said her office would do the same for any constituent caught in her predicament. Send an aide to stand in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles office? Yeah, right again. <

But she really started pulling on the bungee cord of truth when she tried to explain why it had taken her eight months to notice that the plates had expired: According to Panzer, she never drives the car. <

Oh, yeah? Then how did the car collect 12 parking tickets within three blocks of the state Capitol between 1998 and 2001? And what about the two speeding tickets Panzer got, in 2000 and 2001, while behind the wheel of the yellow Cadillac? Does that sound like "never drives it" to you? <

OK, so a politician telling lies is not exactly a hot news flash. But it's still outrageous. <

Panzer has now been caught lying twice, both times on fairly inconsequential issues where the truth would have done far less damage. Her constituents and her colleagues need to ask themselves: If she's so willing to lie about the small stuff, why should we believe her on the big questions?