... and in so doing discredits his own.

So there it is. In a statement released minutes ago, Joe Sestak makes clear that he has been misrepresenting the truth on the White House job offer for months.

When he answered "yes" to Larry Kane's question: "Is it true that you were offered a high-ranking job in the administration in a bid to get you to drop out of the primary against Arlen Specter?" that was no true. According to the White House he was offered an "unpaid advisory position." That is not a job.

The most commonly understood definition of the word "job" is this: "A regular activity performed in exchange for payment, especially as one's trade, occupation, or profession."

When Kane followed up and about the specific job of Secretary of the Navy, which is a paid position by the way, Sestak smiled and said "no comment." When Kane came back and asked about it being a "big job," Sestak nodded.

That turns out not to be true. Sestak was offered, according to everybody's story now, an unpaid position as a White House advisor. That is not a job. In the days after asserting that he was offered a job, and the White House denied any such offer, Sestak would only say he was "asked a question" and he "answered it honestly."

He knew what he had said. He knew it wasn't accurate. He knew what he said brought the White House under suspicion of having committed a crime and covering it up. Now, it turns out, according to Sestak himself, he created a false impression with his answer. He let it stand. And he repeated it week in and week out for months.

I, for one, believed Sestak when he said he was offered a job. I believed it because of the way the White House behaved in softening its own denials about the offer. I also believed it because I thought Sestak was a man of honor and not crazy enough to level a bogus charge against the leaders of his own party.

If this the true story, there was no reason for it not to have come out within days of Sestak misspeaking. Sestak himself should have corrected the record. He didn't. So it turns out Arlen Specter was right about him. Sestak used the controversy for political mileage. And now he is the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate to represent Pennsylvania.

How this with sit with the voters, I don't know. But I am frankly amazed at Sestak's brazen misrepresentation of the truth, his failure to correct his misstatement and his willingness to let others be suspected of committing a crime that never happened.

Unbelievable.