Our own Sen. Orrin Hatch has become a star of the Democratic National Committee's "Fact Check" series in which researchers take an erroneous comment from a Republican politician trying to demonize health care reform and document why it is wrong.

While many members of Congress have been the subject of the organized campaign to show them up as liars, Hatch, it seems, is one of the DNC's favorites because so many of his comments are so easily debunked.

Not surprisingly, most of Hatch's targeted comments that haven't been made directly on the Senate floor have been made on Fox News, that "fair and balanced" network that allows those with the right political stripes to say any outrageous thing they want without challenge, question or fact check.

So while the Democrats' partisan tactics by themselves create reasonable suspicion about their own motives, they do supply the documentation necessary to show why a particular statement is, at best, misleading, or at worst, a bald-faced lie.

And Utah's senior senator has become a leader of the pack.

The talkative Hatch comes in for a DNC debunking about every other day. Here is but a sampling:

» On Dec, 2, Hatch said on Fox News that under the health care reform plan, medical providers would be forced to give abortions against their consciences. "If this language goes through, that language could be used against Catholic hospitals and other religious hospitals, other groups that do not believe in abortion, which may cause actions of discrimination... . Not only that, they might be forced to give them."

Fact check: Page 123 of the Senate's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act states: "No individual health care provider or health care facility may be discriminated against because of a willingness or an unwillingness, if doing so is contrary to the religious or moral beliefs of the provider or facility, to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions."

» Three days later, Hatch told Fox News that under the Senate bill, abortions would be paid for with taxpayer money.

Fact check: The Senate bill does just the opposite under the section entitled "PROHIBITION ON FEDERAL FUNDS FOR ABORTION SERVICES IN COMMUNITY HEALTH INSURANCE OPTION."

» Also this month, Hatch said on the Senate floor that "The Medicare trust fund will be insolvent in the year 2017... . The Reid bill will make this situation much worse. Look at the cuts to Medicare. ... These cuts [to Medicare Advantage] will threaten beneficiary access to care as Medicare providers find it more and more challenging to provide health services to Medicare patients."

Fact check: The AARP, one of several debunkers of this statement, quotes budget experts who reported: "Without cutting guaranteed benefits, (the bill) shores up the solvency of the Medicare Trust Fund for five additional years."

I don't have the space here to list the many more examples of the debunking of Orrin Hatch, but you get the idea.

There is a reason why Hatch, who in the past has worked with liberal Sen. Edward Kennedy and liberal Rep. Henry Waxman to improve health care for low-income children and seniors, has become one of the most reckless flamethrowers against health care reform in the Senate.

Hatch is astutely observing the right-wing dissection of his Republican colleague, Sen. Bob Bennett, as Bennett prepares to run for a fourth term next year.

Hatch, you see, is up for re-election in 2012 and would be blind not to notice that blasting away at anything Democrats do is more appealing to the ultraconservative wing of Utah's Republican Party than to try to actually accomplish something for the good of the country.