http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/ en-us Copyright 2008 Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:59:52 -0500 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.2 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Diplomatic reporter Glenn Kessler joined me for a live fact check of tonight's Democratic debate from Las Vegas, Nevada, on MSNBC beginning at 9 p.m. EDT. Researcher Alice Crites helped dig up facts for us, and the campaigns also contributed. This was our third live fact check. We inaugurated this new feature with the back-to-back Republican and Democratic debates from Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., on January 5. Last week, we fact checked a GOP debate from Myrtle Beach, S.C. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/democratic_debate_las_vegas.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/democratic_debate_las_vegas.html Live Fact Check Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:59:52 -0500 The poet and the pol "You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose." --Hillary Clinton, Nashua, N.H., Jan. 6. I will get back to fact checking tomorrow, but first let me share my impressions from four exciting days in New Hampshire. When I heard Hillary Clinton quote Mario Cuomo in a packed sports hall in Nashua on Sunday, I knew instantly that she had captured the essence of the 2008 presidential campaign. The most important distinction in this race, at least at this stage, is not between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. It is between the Poetry Party and the Prose Party. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/poetry_versus_prose.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/poetry_versus_prose.html Candidate Watch Tue, 08 Jan 2008 10:53:16 -0500 We assembled a team of crack fact checkers to truth squad the Republican and Democratic debates at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, and call the candidates out for any inaccuracies. Environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin was sitting next to me in the media filing center. She is also an expert on Congress, having covered it all her life. We were joined in Washington by John Solomon, a veteran political reporter for the Associated Press and now the Post, and diplomatic reporter Glenn Kessler. Prior to the foreign policy beat, Glenn covered economics. I was a foreign correspondent for the Post for more than a decade, and also covered education, so I hope we will be able to weigh in quickly on most factual disputes. Backing us up In Washington were ace researcher Alice Crites and editor Steve Ginsberg. Since this was a live fact check, we are not going to issue http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/live_debate_fact_check.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/live_debate_fact_check.html Live Fact Check Sat, 05 Jan 2008 22:44:14 -0500 John Edwards, Ottumwa, IA, Jan. 2, 2008. UPDATED Jan 3: 5:30 pm "Special interests control our government while members of the middle class who work hard and play by the rules are left behind." "Alliance for a New America" website Our focus today is Alliance for a New America, the shadowy advocacy group that praises John Edwards as the candidate who will sweep the "special interests" out of Washington. The organization emerged out of nowhere over the last few weeks with a series of mailers and television and radio ads in Iowa that have cost over $1 million, and seems likely to recede back into the shadows as soon as the election is over. Edwards has said he has no influence over the group, even though his former manager, Nick Baldick, has been identified as its organizing genius. Hypocrisy alert? http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/edwards_and_special_interests.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/edwards_and_special_interests.html Candidate Watch Thu, 03 Jan 2008 06:00:00 -0500 Rudy Giuliani with Margaret Thatcher, September 19, 2007. One of the five "most famous" Americans? In the spirit of the holiday season, I am inviting nominations for the "Top Ten Fibs of 2007". There are two categories in the competition: "Presidential Candidates" and "Best of the Rest." Post your nominations in the comments section or use the "Contact the Fact Checker" form. Also feel free to cast a non-binding vote for your favorite fib. The deadline is Friday, Dec. 28. A panel of crack Fact Checkers will select the Top Five Fibs in each category and post them online on Monday, December 31. We will also make a Geppetto truth-telling award in the "Presidential Candidates" category. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/12/the_fibs_of_2007.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/12/the_fibs_of_2007.html Candidate Watch Mon, 24 Dec 2007 06:00:00 -0500 Campaigning in New Hampshire, Dec. 7, 2007. "America's trade policy has been a complete disaster...We got something America did not need, which is NAFTA, which has cost us millions of jobs."--John Edwards, Democratic Debate on CNN, Nov. 15, 2007. John Edwards has embraced economic populism as the central plank of his electoral platorm. In the world according to Edwards, honest, hard-working Americans are for ever being exploited by shadowy lobbying groups and powerful vested interests. It is a black-and-white world in which there is not much room for nuance. The former senator for North Carolina and Democratic vice-presidential candidate sometimes gets so carried away by his rhetoric that he makes mistakes. An obvious example is his rhetoric on trade. In the Senate, Edwards voted in favor of several trade agreements, including a normalization of trade with China. On the campaign trail, he has slammed the North American Free Trade http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/12/most_revealing_fibs_john_edwar.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/12/most_revealing_fibs_john_edwar.html Candidate Watch Tue, 11 Dec 2007 06:00:00 -0500 Edwards talking to New Hampshire voters. "I believe every candidate for president owes the American people a clear and specific plan for ending the Iraq War...All she [Hillary Clinton] has said is that she will meet with her generals within two months of taking office. That's not a plan. That's not even a real promise. It's the promise of a planning meeting. --John Edwards, Speech on foreign policy, Iowa City, November 5, 2007 I examined Hillary Clinton's promise to "end the Iraq war" in a previous post, and found it woefully lacking in specifics. But John Edwards caricatures Clinton's position on Iraq, while skating over his own refusal to commit to pulling all U.S. troops out of that country by the end of the next presidential term, in January 2013. The claim that Clinton's only electoral pledge on Iraq is the "promise of a planning meeting" is a great http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/11/edwards_confronts_clinton_on_i.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/11/edwards_confronts_clinton_on_i.html Candidate Watch Mon, 12 Nov 2007 08:00:00 -0500 Who is the "purest" of them all? My posting last Monday asking whether Barack Obama and John Edwards are guilty of hypocrisy in their fund-raising practices--they refuse donations from "federal lobbyists" but accept money from the people who employ the lobbyists--attracted lots of comment. I promised to publish a sampling of the most interesting reactions, so here goes: Some commenters could not see what all the fuss is about and said the Fact Checker was shilling for Hillary Clinton, who has accused Obama and Edwards of double standards. "Oh come on!," wrote 'Laura.' "Your own article admits that Edwards and Obama are actually refusing money from lobbyists. In other words, they are actually doing what they are saying they are doing." http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/10/fact_checking_the_fact_checker_1.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/10/fact_checking_the_fact_checker_1.html Candidate Watch Mon, 29 Oct 2007 08:50:00 -0500 Obama and Edwards refuse to take money from federal lobbyists. "We continue to build the largest grassroots movement in history, but Washington lobbyists and special interests rallied to help Hillary Clinton out-raise us for the first time." --Barack Obama, letter to supporters, October 16, 2007 "The first thing we have to do is cut off special interests' ability to influence campaigns with their money, and increase the power of regular people." --John Edwards, in New Hampshire, October 13, 2007. Both Barack Obama and John Edwards have fulminated against "lobbyists" and "insiders," and claimed that they will end "business as usual" in Washington if elected president. But the latest quarterly campaign finance reports show that both candidates continue to receive large sums of money from donors employed by powerful "special interests," including trial lawyers, pharmaceutical companies, and hedge funds. Do we detect a little hypocrisy here? http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/10/obama_edwards_and_the_lobbying.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/10/obama_edwards_and_the_lobbying.html Candidate Watch Mon, 22 Oct 2007 07:00:00 -0500 "The idea that we can keep incarcerating and keep incarcerating -- pretty soon we're not going to have a young African-American male population in America. They're all going to be in prison or dead. One of the two."--John Edwards, MTV political forum, September 27, 2007 [Watch the Video] "We have more work to do when more young black men languish in prison than attend colleges and universities across America." --Barack Obama, NAACP forum, July 12, 2007. The Facts Where do they get this stuff? Both candidates are way off the mark. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/10/young_black_males_headed_for_e_1.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/10/young_black_males_headed_for_e_1.html Candidate Watch Wed, 03 Oct 2007 06:00:00 -0500 (Evan Vucci - AP) John Edwards statement to Good Morning America, September 3, 2007: "And the same polls that you're talking about, if you look at the general election match-ups, show very clearly that I'm the strongest Democrat to beat the Republicans in the general election. " The Facts National head-to-head polls collected by Real Clear Politics do not support Edwards's claim. They vary week by week, alternately favoring one candidate, then another. The most recent poll averages suggest that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have as good a chance as Edwards in many head-to-head matchups. We include the decimal points in the following September 24 data from Real Clear Politics, even though pollsters caution that they imply a level of precision that no poll can possibly have. The following table shows the lead for Democratic candidates in each matchup. Hypothetical winners of each contest are marked in bold. EdwardsObamaClinton http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/09/is_edwards_the_most_electable.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/09/is_edwards_the_most_electable.html Candidate Watch Mon, 24 Sep 2007 10:22:10 -0500