But instead of staying out of sight, Weiner headed straight into the Speaker’s Lobby to a pack of reporters, including me, and announced, “Fire away.”

What followed was eight minutes of nearly uninterrupted fabrication, 68 individual lies by my count, which put the then-congressman somewhere on the continuum between creepy pervert, compulsive liar, and mentally unstable person.

In fairness to Weiner, he told some of the same lies multiple times during the press gaggle. Some of the lies he told were big, some were small. Some were misleading observations, while others were flat-out whoppers.

Laced between the lies were inexplicable doses of innuendo, with Weiner apologizing for being “stiff” the day before, explaining that he had been “poking” Clarence Thomas over the weekend on Twitter, and speculating that the Twitter imbroglio could prove to be “the point of al Qaeda’s sword.” At one point he asked the group of reporters to take a step away from him. “But not you,” he said to a young woman. “You can stand as close as you like.”