Commentary
In all parliamentary democracies whose legislatures are descended from the British “Mother of Parliaments” in Westminster, there is a rule against what is called “unparliamentary language.” Members are allowed to criticize and even to insult one another, but only within certain limits.
These limits vary from one parliament to another, but all have in common an absolute proscription against any use of the words “lie” and “liar” as the most unparliamentary language of all.
Winston Churchill once famously evaded the Speaker’s wrath in the House of Commons by substituting the euphemism of “terminological inexactitude,” for “lie”—a locution which has gone on to have a life of its own among connoisseurs of irony….