"Oh!  What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive," warned Sir Walter Scott.  That's a good warning that falls on deaf ears among the leading ladies of the Democrats who have a penchant for telling tall tales about their pasts.  Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren are now joined by new saviors from the left, Kamala Harris and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The "new rising star" of the Donkeys, according to Newsweek, Ocasio-Cortez unseated ten-term Democrat incumbent Joe Crowley in the recent New York City primary.  Crowley is part of the Democrat establishment, a creature of the bipartisan D.C. swamp inhabited by career politicians from both sides of the political aisle.  Ocasio-Cortez also has her eyes on the biggest prize of all, the White House, according to her own mother.

The self-proclaimed working-class "girl from the Bronx" actually grew up in Westchester County, New York, one of the ten wealthiest counties in the U.S.  It's also the county Bill and Hillary Clinton now call home.  She lived there from age 5 through her high school graduation and was even registered to vote there until 2016.

Her campaign website bio makes no mention of her upper-middle-class suburban upbringing, instead mentioning only the Bronx.

At least she now lives in the Bronx, unlike a former U.S. senator for New York who didn't live in New York until she decided to represent the state as a U.S. senator.  More on her later.  Ocasio-Cortez can certainly represent the Bronx, but misrepresenting herself and her upbringing makes her one of the Democrat ladies of the lie.

Across the country in California, in another liberal enclave, is another such lady, Senator Kamala Harris.  She is another up and coming socialist in the modern Democratic Party, "[s]tarting to make the right moves for 2020," according to the Huffington Post.  She recently told some tall tales about her past.

She tweeted, in response to the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination, that hers was only the second class in the Berkeley public schools to integrate.

Implying that a Justice Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court would automatically bring back slavery and segregation, she seems to be suggesting that confirming Kavanaugh to the high court will prevent anyone of color from becoming a lawyer or a member of Congress.

Unfortunately for her, the truth lies far removed from her tweet.  Photos from the Berkeley yearbook from 1963, a year before Harris was even born, shows that the school was already integrated.  Oops.

As to the lack of integration preventing a black student becoming a lawyer, she should take a closer look at the same Supreme Court she is so worried about.  Justice Clarence Thomas was the only black student at his high school in Savannah, Georgia.  From his hardly integrated high school, he went to Holy Cross, Yale, and eventually the U.S. Supreme Court.  If he could become a lawyer, Senator Harris's fears are unwarranted, not to mention her premise being a lie.

The other Democrat ladies of the lie are well known.  Both have ties to the U.S. Senate and are or were once considered presidential hopefuls.  Elizabeth Warren, or, as President Trump mockingly refers to her, Pocahontas, lied about her American Indian heritage in order to secure a faculty position at Harvard and subsequent recognition as a "minority faculty member."  She sticks to her claim to this day – all based on her high cheekbones and vague family tales her grandparents told her.

She has refused to take a DNA test, and to date, there is as much evidence that she is American Indian as there is that Trump worked with Putin to steal the election from Hillary Clinton.

Speaking of Hillary Clinton, she is last but certainly not least of the Democrat ladies of the lie.  Everyone is quite familiar with her lies about not knowing that her emails were considered classified, that a video was responsible for the Benghazi attacks, or that she magically turned $1,000 into $100,000 in a few months of trading cattle futures.

Like the other ladies, she also lied about her childhood and significant events in her life.  She claimed she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, famed climber of Mount Everest.  Unfortunately, he was simply Ed, an unknown New Zealand beekeeper, the year that Mrs. Clinton was born, six years before he climbed Everest.

There was also her famous claim during the 2008 presidential campaign that she once landed in Bosnia "under sniper fire."  The story was debunked by the normally Clinton-friendly Washington Post.

What compels these ladies to lie about their childhoods?  Is it insecurity, or are they playing into identity politics, standard operating procedure for Democrats?  In the age of the internet and instant fact-checking information, it's foolish to make claims that are so easily checked and refuted.

Politicians are given a wide berth for hyperbole on the campaign trail, but obvious lies come home to roost, as they have for these prominent Democrat presidential wannabes and ladies of the lie.

Brian C Joondeph, M.D., MPS is a Denver-based physician and writer.  Follow him on Facebook,  LinkedIn, and Twitter.