Unsurprisingly, the Washington Post has found an excuse to bash Republican Sen. Mike Lee's new book Our Lost Constitution: The Willful Subversion of America's Founding Document. Their beef: he "made things up," or, as Lee clearly explains in the books' author's note, he took "dramatic license" to fill in details that are missing (and footnoted whenever he did so)—a common practice in such works.

Here's how the Washington Post piece, titled "In his book on the Constitution and the founders, Sen. Mike Lee mixes history with fiction," framed the (non)issue:

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has written a book titled “Our Lost Constitution: The Willful Subversion of America’s Founding Document,” to be published Tuesday. A passionate and detailed argument in favor of restoring key constitutional principles, the book attempts to convey what it was like “for those who participated in the ‘miracle in Philadelphia’ and produced our Constitution,” Lee explains in the introductory author’s note. “If this book succeeds, it will help you feel as if you were right there at the pivotal moments of history.” To heighten the immediacy of some of those moments, Lee has resorted to an unusual device for a nonfiction work: He has made things up.

As the piece notes, Sen. Lee clearly explains his approach to his readers in the author's note, and carefully noted when he is taking creative license: