[ Editor’s Note: Yes, I’ve seen this list. And it’s a great list. The problem is, it’s simply not true… or

I recently saw a clib where Mark Bailey, the president of Dallas Theological Seminary read a list of criminals and their crimes and asked his audience if they thought the crimes were committed by players from the NFL or the NBA. Here is the list: 36 have been accused of spousal abuse. 7 have been arrested for fraud. 19 have been accused of writing bad checks. 117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least two businesses. 3 have done time for assault. 71 cannot get a credit card due to their bad credit. 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges. 8 have been arrested for shoplifting. 21 currently are defendants in lawsuits. 84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year. Well, do you think NBA or NFL? Well, the answer is neither. It’s the 435 members of the United States Congress.

to better clarify, it’s not in any way verifiable. I mean, some of those things are, but stuff like “ cannot get a credit card due to their bad credit” is just silly. Credit reports are not public record. Most of that other stuff is, but even then, there’s no compendium of congressional criminal or civil charges that exists. These number sound believable enough ( which in and of itself is actually kind of sad) that most folks who hear it or read it would probably just say, “ Yep, sounds about right,” especially since Rep. George Santos and Sen. Bob Menendez were both recently convicted of crimes, but that list you have dates back to the 1990s, so even if it were true 25 years ago, there’s been a lot of turnover since then ( but amazingly not a complete turnover, thanks to these career politicians who get embedded in their congressional seats like a tick. I would like to know the real number, though, because it ain’t zero]