Arrington to Apple: Liar liar pants on fire

[Originally posted Aug. 22, 2009 on Fortune.com]

"A total lie." "Untrue." "Misleading." "Complete fabrication." "Way beyond misleading."

Those are some of the nicer things Michael Arrington had to say about Apple (AAPL) in his analysis of what he calls "Apple's long rambling letter to the FCC."

Arrington, for those who don't have Techmeme on their morning reading list, is the former securities lawyer and serial entrepreneur who runs TechCrunch, arguably Silicon Valley's most influential tech blog.

The letter he's referring to is Apple's formal response to an inquiry by the Federal Communications Commission into the role AT&T (T) played in Apple's rejection of Google's (GOOG) powerful Google Voice app. See here.

AT&T's answer: we played no role. Google's answer: redacted. Apple's answer: we never rejected the app; we just haven't, for various reasons, approved it yet. (link)

Arrington's response: Apple is lying through its teeth. In particular, he writes: