improve this sentence

Snagged from Instapundit:

They have to lie about it, because if they told the truth no one but party hacks would be against it.

The above sentence is poorly punctuated, and the problem has to do with a basic misunderstanding about how commas work.  How might you, as a proofreader, improve the above sentence?  From what I see, at least two improvements are possible; there may be more.  I'll put forth my own insights below, but I'll color the text white so it's invisible.  To see what I've written, simply use your cursor to highlight the space between the brackets.

Here's what I think (highlight between the brackets to make visible):

[The most obvious problem is the comma sitting just before "because." The rule is that, in a complex sentence—which has an independent clause and a dependent clause—you NEVER use a comma to separate clauses if the dependent clause comes last.  I've repeatedly offered the following examples of how this works:

If you do that again, I'll kill you. (dependent clause first = comma)

I'll kill you if you do that again. (dependent clause last = no comma)

This is why I keep saying that "commas mark pauses" is a bad, bad rule to go by when trying to figure out when to use, or not to use, commas.  Above, Glenn Reynolds makes the "pause" mistake because he's punctuating the sentence as if he were an actor reading out a line.  An actor might very well pause before the "because" (and that would be fine), but in written English, this violates a basic rule of punctuation.

Another problem, very similar in nature, is the LACK of a comma after the "if" clause:  there should be a comma after the word "truth."  (See the example "if" sentences above.)

What makes this situation a bit sticky is the fact that the sentence contains two subordinating conjunctions, "because" and "if," which are juxtaposed.  To my mind, there are at least two ways to fix Reynolds's defective sentence:

1.  They have to lie about it because, if they told the truth, no one but party hacks would be against it.

2.  They have to lie about it because if they told the truth, no one but party hacks would be against it.

So as you see, solution (1) is a two-comma solution that makes the "if" clause after "because" into a sort of parenthetical expression surrounded by commas.  (And, yes:  the commas do technically mark pauses.)  Meanwhile, solution (2) might be a more "classical" solution in that it cleaves very strictly to the comma rule I described above.  To my mind, both of these solutions work, although I personally favor (2).  In modern English, sprinkling too many commas throughout your prose can make the prose cumbersome.

Other solutions are possible; they would probably involve more editing, i.e., a rewording of Reynolds's sentence in order to improve it.*

__________

*I see proofreading as a nuts-and-bolts activity that is little more than tweaking.  It's the repairing of errors in grammar, mechanics, and possibly style.  Editing, by contrast, is more in-depth than proofreading:  it's the actual changing of content to arrive at prose that is clearer, stylistically superior, more logical, and more fluid.  Doubtless there's a fuzzy borderline between the two concepts, but if you zoom your mental camera back just a bit, proofreading and editing are clearly distinct activities.  For this reason, I consider it highly unethical to edit a student's research paper, but unproblematic to proofread it.  Proofreading while leaving editorial comments is also kosher.  In that situation, it's up to the paper's author to accept or ignore whatever advice I give.]