Democrats in the House of Representatives and a handful of Republicans last week voted to formally rebuke Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., for shouting "You lie!" during President Barack Obama's address to a joint session of Congress Sept. 9. Mr. Wilson's outburst came after the president said illegal immigrants were not included in his health-care plan.

This was a mistake.

Rep. Wilson was rude, as he acknowledged in his apology later that night:

"This evening I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the president's remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the health-care bill," he said. "While I disagree with the president's statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the president for this lack of civility."

Mr. Obama accepted Mr. Wilson's apology. If the Democratic leadership in the House had any brains, they would have done the same. Pursuing this vendetta will only hurt them, for two reasons.

The first and foremost reason is because the president was deceptive, as the White House all but acknowledged when it issued a "clarification" of what the president had said.

There is a sentence in the House version of the Obamacare bill that would deny government-provided health insurance to illegal aliens. But the bill also would forbid health-care providers from checking immigration status, rendering the prohibition unenforceable.

When Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., offered an amendment to require verification of eligibility, Democrats voted it down. Democrats also voted down an amendment that would have required verification of eligibility for the expanded Medicaid program. This suggests the illegal-immigrant language was in the bill just for camouflage.

Liberal blogger Mickey Kaus warned this was a problem:

"Why not just skip the kabuki/BS phase where congressional Dems try to sneak de facto health care for illegals through while showily saying the opposite, and just immediately agree to verification -- avoiding the bleeding interval in which the ruse is sniffed out by the right?"

In its clarification the White House said the verification system supported by Mr. Heller would be used to check eligibility for Obamacare. Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said the enforcement language would be added to the Senate version of the bill.

Associated Press fact checkers Calvin Woodward and Erica Werner said the president also misrepresented the situation when he said people who like their private health insurance plans would be able to keep them. The president said, "Nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have."

The AP reporters said that's true, "as far as it goes," noting that "the Congressional Budget Office analyzed the health-care bill written by House Democrats and said that by 2016 some 3 million people who now have employer-based care would lose it because their employers would decide to stop offering it."

And when Mr. Obama said making insurance companies pay for preventive care would save money? The AP: "Studies have shown that much preventive care -- particularly the tests like the ones Obama mentions -- actually costs money instead of saving it. That's because detecting acute diseases like breast cancer involves testing many people who would never end up developing the disease."

The tearjerker anecdotes the president told to demonstrate the need for health-insurance reform also were distorted, according to an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Scott Harrington, a professor of health-care management at the University of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Obama said an Illinois man "lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy," and "died because of it." This wasn't true, the man's sister said. The coverage was reinstated, albeit after the Illinois attorney general intervened. But her brother had transplant surgery within the desired window of opportunity, which was "extremely successful," extending his life by more than three years.

The reprimand of Mr. Wilson just focuses more attention on what the president said, and how it diverges from the truth. People are more likely to be upset that the president was misleading than that Rep. Wilson was rude in pointing that out.

The censure effort also highlights Democrat hypocrisy. There was no effort to censure those Democratic members of Congress who booed and made catcalls during President Bush's state of the union speeches in 2004 and 2005.