Like her mentor Andrew Breitbart, tea party leader and CNN contributor Dana Loesch has a knack for willfully misleading people. She's known for lying, bullying, and browbeating others.

I found myself the target of a Dana Loesch twitter rampage recently, when she attacked my position on birth control and medical insurance. I believe that all people deserve medical insurance that provides coverage for their health needs, whatever those health needs may be. Further to this, I believe birth control is as valid a medical need as any other, regardless of its opponents' many counterarguments.

During our exchange, I witnessed her penchant for dishonesty, sensationalism, and other disingenuous tactics. It was something remarkable, that's for sure.

Here's what I learned, distilled into 10 easy lessons for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

Lesson #1: Want to stir up your fans? Cherry-pick a twitter comment and sensationalize it.

Yesterday evening, I was posting photos from the Unite Against the War on Women (#UAWOW) rally in Boston to twitter. While doing so, I noticed many conservative commenters were hijacking the #UAWOW thread. I replied to a couple, including this tweet from someone named Sam Valley:

As is normal in twitter, I included Sam's tweet's recipient in my reply to him. I'd never heard of @DLoesch, but as I'd soon discover, Dana has a reputation lying, bullying, and browbeating others. She gained extra notoriety after Rush Limbaugh's attacks on Sandra Fluke, when Dana insisted that she could still call Fluke "whatever I want," then referred to her as a "nympho." Classy!

Anyhow...

Dana responded to my tweet with a favorite tea party "fact": She claimed birth control only costs $9 a month, meaning it's cheap like asprin and shouldn't be included in health insurance plans.

Cheap birth control isn't available to everyone, though (see below), and it doesn't work for everyone, either: the discounted generics are not universally effective, and other types cost exponentially more. So I replied:

I also read the following subtext in her question: Why should the premiums non-birth control users go towards people's birth control costs? Doesn't that drive up non-users' costs? Besides being a misguided but increasingly common talking point, this is dangerously selfish thinking. It sets up a slippery slope for other health issues to be excluded from insurance coverage. So I asked:

In this way, Dana formulated her Big Lie: that I claim birth control is "like" cancer treatments.

Knowing nothing about her, though, her request seemed a random nonsequitur. My position is that all health care expenses should be covered -- not that they're all directly equivalent. Duh. So, I wrote her off as a troll and ignored her illogical demand.

Which leads us to:

Lesson #2: Does your target ignore you when you bait her? Are you frustrated she doesn't recognize you're an Important Person? Just tweet at her as often as you can, up to three times a minute! That's not immature--it's 100% respectable.

Meanwhile, in each rapid-fire tweet, sensationalize things. Mischaracterize your target's original statement as one of direct equivalency. Show off that moral outrage, Rambo style!

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