http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/ en-us Copyright 2008 Wed, 07 May 2008 10:30:00 -0400 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.36 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Clinton rally, Indianapolis, Ind., May 6, 2008. "Tonight we've come from behind, we've broken the tie, and thanks to you it's full speed on to the White House." --Hillary Clinton, May 6, 2008. Brave, defiant words from Hillary Clinton. But observe the facial expressions. For many people watching television on Tuesday night, the most striking impression from the Clinton victory rally in Indiana was not the words that came out of Hillary's mouth, but the look on Bill's face. It was the look of a man who knows that a dream is slipping away. The Facts Try this experiment. Take a look at this extract from Clinton's speech in Indianapolis with the volume turned down. Watch the expressions on the faces of Hillary, Bill and Chelsea, and let me know what you think. Here is what I saw. A candidate with a mask of upbeat determination on her face, http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/05/a_geppetto_for_bill_clinton.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/05/a_geppetto_for_bill_clinton.html Candidate Watch Wed, 07 May 2008 10:30:00 -0400 Coco Solo, Panama Canal Zone, 1936. "John Sidney McCain, III, is a `natural born Citizen' under Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States." --U.S. Senate Resolution, April 30, 2008. On Wednesday evening, the U.S. Senate unanimously declared John S. McCain III a "natural-born citizen," eligible to be president of the United States. That was the good news for the presumptive Republican nominee, who was born nearly 72 years ago in a military hospital in the Panama Canal Zone. The bad news is that the Senate resolution is a non-binding opinion that fails to resolve one of the murkiest, untested areas of the U.S. constitution. In an attempt to clarify the issues at stake, I am posting the key documents in the debate. For a more detailed look at the constitutional debate, see my story in today's print edition of the Post, available here. As a http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/05/citizen_mccain.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/05/citizen_mccain.html Candidate Watch Fri, 02 May 2008 06:00:00 -0400 Has Hamas endorsed Obama? "It's just a fact that Hamas, apparently their North American spokesperson, is endorsing Senator Obama. People can make their own judgment from that." --Sen. John McCain, conference call with bloggers, April 25, 2008. "What Senator McCain has said repeatedly is that these candidates cannot be held accountable for all the views of people who endorse them or people who befriend them...When somebody endorses you or befriends you, they're embracing your views, the candidates' views, not the other way around." --McCain senior adviser Charlie Black, interview with MSNBC. March 14, 2008. The McCain campaign has been making a lot of Sen. Barack Obama's friends and acquaintances recently, seeking to tar the Illinois senator with the opinions of his former pastor Jeremiah Wright, the former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers, and even the radical Islamic group Hamas. The guilt-by-association claims seem to run counter to McCain's own http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/05/guilt_by_association.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/05/guilt_by_association.html Candidate Watch Thu, 01 May 2008 06:00:00 -0400 Philadelphia, Pa., April 23, 2008. "The Tide is Turning. After last night's decisive victory in Pennsylvania, more people have voted for Hillary than any other candidate, including Sen. Obama." --Clinton website, "The Fact Hub", April 23, 2008. Hillary Clinton got a much-needed electoral boost from the voters of Pennsylvania on Tuesday night, when she trounced Barack Obama by nearly 210,000 votes, according to the official results. It was a very clear victory, but it is a big stretch for her to claim that she is ahead in the popular vote. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/04/is_clinton_winning_the_popular.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/04/is_clinton_winning_the_popular.html Candidate Watch Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:00:00 -0400 Antoin Rezko and Stuart Levine. "Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama was again drawn into Tony Rezko's corruption trial on Monday, when the prosecution's star witness placed Obama at a party for an Iraqi-born billionaire who was later barred entry to the United States." --Chicago Sun-Times, April 15, 2008. Proof of a meeting between Barack Obama and the Iraqi-born billionaire, Nadhmi Auchi, would be a blow for the Illinois senator's presidential campaign. Obama has repeatedly said that he cannot recollect any meeting with Auchi, a London-based businessman who is appealing a conviction for fraud in France. Auchi was a business contact of Antoin Rezko, a former Chicago developer and Obama fundraiser currently on trial for corruption. With a fortune estimated at more than $5 billion, Auchi is one of the world's richest men. According to U.S. prosecutors, Rezko lobbied the U.S. government to get a visa for Auchi after he http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/04/obamas_rezko_connection.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/04/obamas_rezko_connection.html Candidate Watch Wed, 16 Apr 2008 06:00:00 -0400 John and Cindy McCain "Heat the olive oil in a 12-inch non-stick pan over medium heat. Add fish to pan and cook until rare, about 2 minutes per side. Alternatively, cook until done to your likeness. Slice thin and distribute among 4 serving plates. Serve with a generous portion of Napa cabbage slaw." --Recipe for Ahi Tuna from FoodNetwork.com. "Heat the olive oil in a 12-inch non-stick pan over medium heat. Add fish to pan and cook until rare, about 2 minutes per side. Alternatively, cook until done to your likeness. Slice thin and distribute among 4 serving plates. Serve with a generous portion of Napa cabbage slaw." --"McCain Family Recipe" from johnmccain.com. In an effort to demonstrate that the McCains are regular folks, "in touch" with ordinary Americans, the McCain website has been featuring a series of "McCain family recipes" for such dishes as Ahi Tuna with Napa http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/04/cindys_recipegate.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/04/cindys_recipegate.html Candidate Watch Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:58:27 -0400 Elton John fundraiser, April 9, 2008. "There was a lot of fulminating because Hillary, one time late at night when she was exhausted, misstated and immediately apologized for it, what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995....And I think she was the first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone." --Bill Clinton, campaigning in Indiana, April 10, 2008. Just as the Bosnia sniper flap seemed to be dying down, count on a finger-pointing Bill Clinton to fan the embers. The former president managed to make half a dozen factual errors in coming to the defense of his wife for her now acknowledged "misstatements" about her March 1996 Bosnia trip. By Friday afternoon, the would-be first laddie was revising his revisionist version of history. He told reporters that he had received a call from Hillary telling him to "let me handle it." http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/04/bill_shoots_from_the_hip.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/04/bill_shoots_from_the_hip.html Candidate Watch Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:38:20 -0400 Molly's gas station, Manheim, Pa., March 31, 2008. "What Senator Obama does not tell you is that..he has taken roughly $213,000 from the employees of oil companies. The senator has not been upfront, open, and honest with the people of Pennsylvania with respect to this ad. He does not tell us that two of his bundlers are top executives of oil companies." --Clinton campaign conference call, April 9, 2008. The Obama and Clinton campaigns have got into a rather petty dispute over a television ad that the Illinois senator is running in Pennsylvania. The Clinton camp says that Obama has not been "upfront" about the amount of financial support that he receives from oil company employees and executives. The Clintonites have a valid point. On the other hand, they are conveniently overlooking the even larger financial contributions to their candidate from representatives of the oil and gas sector. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/04/the_pot_and_the_kettle.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/04/the_pot_and_the_kettle.html Candidate Watch Fri, 11 Apr 2008 06:00:00 -0400 McCain TV ad "624787" "What is your rank?" "Lieutenant commander in the Navy." "And your official number?" "624787." VOICE-OVER: "John McCain--the American president Americans have been waiting for." Snippets of video create powerful images, but they often leave out an important part of the story. Last week, the McCain campaign launched what it billed as "the first television ad of the general election" to kick off the senator's "Service to America" tour. The centerpiece of the ad (43 seconds in) is a brief clip of McCain being questioned in hospital in Hanoi a few weeks after his U.S. Navy plane was shot down while on a bombing mission over North Vietnam. The clip shows McCain providing his rank and service number, as authorized by the Code of Conduct for American Prisoners of War. Some news outlets depicted the clip, recycled from an earlier McCain advertisement here, as part of http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/04/name_rank_and_service_number.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/04/name_rank_and_service_number.html Candidate Watch Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:03:00 -0400 Teaching at University of Chicago Law School. "Sen. Obama has often referred to himself as 'a constitutional law professor' out on the campaign trail. He never held any such title. And I think anyone, if you ask anyone in academia the distinction between a professor who has tenure and an instructor that does not...you'll get quite an emotional response." --Clinton spokesman Phil Singer. The Clinton campaign has been making a lot of the fact that some of Barack Obama's campaign literature describes the Land-of-Lincolner as a former "law professor" at the University of Chicago when in fact he was a senior lecturer. This brings to mind Henry Kissinger's famous crack about academic politics being "so vicious because the stakes are so small." It is true, as the Clinton spokesman says, that academics are very protective of their titles. But was Obama out of line when he called himself a http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/04/professor_obama.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/04/professor_obama.html Candidate Watch Tue, 01 Apr 2008 06:00:00 -0400 Barack Obama, aged 10, with his father. "What happened in Selma, Alabama and Birmingham also stirred the conscience of the nation. It worried folks in the White House who said, "You know, we're battling Communism. How are we going to win hearts and minds all across the world? If right here in our own country, John, we're not observing the ideals set fort in our Constitution, we might be accused of being hypocrites." So the Kennedys decided we're going to do an air lift. We're going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is. This young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country. He met this woman whose great great-great-great-grandfather had owned slaves; but she had a good idea there http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/obamas_camelot_connection.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/obamas_camelot_connection.html Candidate Watch Mon, 31 Mar 2008 06:00:00 -0400 Pat Nixon, landing in Saigon, July 31, 1969. "I was the first first lady taken into a war zone since Eleanor Roosevelt." --Hillary Clinton, press conference, March 25, 2008. The Clinton campaign has cited newspaper accounts, including one in The Washington Post, to bolster her claim that her now famous March 1996 trip to Bosnia was the first visit to a "war zone" by a first lady since World War II. She is overlooking a trip to Saigon by Pat Nixon at the height of the Vietnam war as well as a trip by Barbara Bush to Saudi Arabia two months before the launching of Desert Storm. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/dont_forget_pat_nixon.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/dont_forget_pat_nixon.html Candidate Watch Thu, 27 Mar 2008 06:00:00 -0400 Campaigning at the University of Pittsburgh, March 25, 2008 "I did misspeak the other day. This has been a very long campaign. Occasionally, I am a human being like everybody else....I have written about it in my book and talked about it on many other occasions and last week, you know, for the first time in 12 or so years I misspoke." --Hillary Clinton, Interview with KDKA Pittsburgh radio, March 25, 2008. Hillary Clinton has finally admitted that she "misspoke" when claiming that she came "under sniper fire" in Bosnia during a March 1996 visit to U.S. troops enforcing the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement. At first, the Clinton campaign maintained that the "mistatement" was limited to one occasion on March 17 when she talked about running across the tarmac "with our heads down." In an interview yesterday with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the New York Senator attributed the mistake to http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/clinton_corrects_the_record.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/clinton_corrects_the_record.html Candidate Watch Wed, 26 Mar 2008 06:00:00 -0400 CBS News report, March 24, 2008. UPDATE Monday 8:50 P.M. As has now been conclusively established by video film and news photographs, Hillary Clinton did NOT come under sniper fire in Bosnia in March 1996 when she made a morale-boosting visit to U.S. troops enforcing the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement. But she is taking plenty of bullets for her over-dramatic accounts of the trip, and acknowledged on Monday that she had made a "misstatement." She said it should be treated as a "minor blip." Here is her full statement, in reply to questions from the Philadelphia Daily News: Now let me tell you what I can remember, OK -- because what I was told was that we had to land a certain way and move quickly because of the threat of sniper fire. So I misspoke -- I didn't say that in my book or other times but if http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/more_incoming_for_clinton.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/more_incoming_for_clinton.html Candidate Watch Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:08:45 -0400 Greeting ceremony, Tuzla military airport, Bosnia, March 25, 1996. "I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base." --Hillary Clinton, speech at George Washington University, March 17, 2008. Hillary Clinton has been regaling supporters on the campaign trail with hair-raising tales of a trip she made to Bosnia in March 1996. In her retelling, she was sent to places that her husband, President Clinton, could not go because they were "too dangerous." When her account was challenged by one of her traveling companions, the comedian Sinbad, she upped the ante and injected even more drama into the story. In a speech earlier this week, she talked about "landing under sniper fire" and running for safety with "our heads down." http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/hillarys_balkan_adventures_par.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/hillarys_balkan_adventures_par.html Candidate Watch Fri, 21 Mar 2008 06:00:00 -0400