Facts are stupid things," President Ronald Reagan said at the 1988 Republican National Convention. In attempting to repeat a quote from President John Adams, he blew it big time.

"Facts are stubborn things," is what our second president actually said, but that didn't matter.

Adams was long dead, so no one objected to Reagan changing the meaning of his quote by mangling it. As the 40th president discovered over two contentious terms, facts, like beliefs, are fungible. Facts are as malleable as one needs them to be. Facts aren't stubborn at all. They're stupid.

This is the lesson that Tom Corbett, Pennsylvania's far less imaginative governor, has taken to heart. This week, the Corbett administration is in Commonwealth Court defending a voter ID law that could disenfranchise 1.6 million voters.