http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/ en-us Copyright 2008 Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:00:00 -0400 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.36 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 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 State College, Pa., April 20, 2008. "I went to law school [and] borrowed money from the federal government at two percent interest. I bet there are some people here who remember that. There was a program called the National Defense Education Act. Our government invested in young people." --Hillary Clinton, Pennsylvania State University, April 20, 2008. Hillary Clinton has been painting a halcyon picture of her days as a Yale Law School student between 1969 and 1972, and how easy it was back then for students to borrow money from the federal government. She drew a collective groan from 1,500 Penn State students over the weekend when she recalled how she was able to borrow money at two percent interest to complete her law school studies. But student interest rates were not quite as low in 1969 as Clinton has claimed--and not everybody could get them. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/04/hillarys_two_percent_college_l.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/04/hillarys_two_percent_college_l.html Candidate Watch Wed, 23 Apr 2008 06:00:00 -0400 Hillary Clinton, April 17, 2008. "I think [the war in Iraq] is the first time we've ever been taken to war and had a president who wouldn't pay for it." --Hillary Clinton, Democratic debate in Pennsylvania, April 17, 2008. Congress invented the federal income tax in August 1861 to help pay for the Civil War. But is Hillary Clinton correct in claiming that George W. Bush is the first president in American history to refuse to pay for a war that he launched? It is a little more complicated than that. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/04/paying_for_the_iraq_war.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/04/paying_for_the_iraq_war.html Candidate Watch Fri, 18 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 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 CNN/YouTube debate, July 24, 2007 "I said early in this campaign I would meet not just with our friends, but with our enemies. Not just with those we like, but those that we don't...Senator Clinton said, 'oh no, that'd be naive, that'd be irresponsible.' I said, 'remember what John F. Kennedy said, he said 'you should never negotiate out of fear, but you should never fear to negotiate.'" --Barack Obama, Florence, SC, Jan. 25, 2008. During the run-up to Super Tuesday, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton re-ignited an old argument about negotiating with foreign leaders. The dispute goes back to an exchange in a CNN/YouTube debate in July 2007, when each candidate was asked whether he/she would agree to meet the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea "without precondition during the first year of your administration." Obama said 'yes'; Clinton replied 'no.' You can see the http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/hillary_vs_barack_on_meeting_w.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/hillary_vs_barack_on_meeting_w.html Candidate Watch Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:30:20 -0400 "I never said that we should try to go ahead and get single-payer [health insurance system]. What I said was that if I were starting from scratch, if we didn't have a system in which employers had typically provided health care, I would probably go with a single-payer system." --Barack Obama, Democratic debate on CNN, Myrtle Beach, S.C., January 22, 2008. During the CNN debate from Myrtle Beach, Hillary Clinton cited Obama's earlier advocacy of a single-payer health insurance system as an example of his inconsistency on health care issues. Obama indignantly denied the charge, arguing that he may have been in favor of a single-payer system in principle--"if I were starting from scratch"--but did not regard it as a practical proposition for the United States. The Clinton campaign promptly dug up an old 2003 clip in which Obama described himself as "a proponent of a single-payer health care http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/obama_and_health_care.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/obama_and_health_care.html Candidate Watch Thu, 24 Jan 2008 06:00:00 -0400 With Irish leaders Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, Dec. 7, 2007 "I went [to Northern Ireland] more than my husband did. I was working to help change the atmosphere among people because leaders alone rarely make peace. They have to bring people along who believe peace is in their interests. I remember a meeting that I pulled together in Belfast, in the town hall there, bringing together for the first time Catholics and Protestants..." --Hillary Clinton, Nashua, N.H. Jan. 6, 2008. Hillary Clinton has repeatedly cited her White House years as key to why she has the ability to serve as president from "Day One." Both she and her husband have pointed to her "independent" role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland as an example of her foreign policy experience. Her critics, notably former Clinton pollster Dick Morris, have poured scorn on her claim that she was "intimately involved" http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/clinton_and_northern_ireland.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/clinton_and_northern_ireland.html Candidate Watch Thu, 10 Jan 2008 10:27:06 -0400 Marching in Selma, March 4, 2007. "As a young girl, I had the great privilege of hearing Dr. King speak in Chicago. The year was 1963. My youth minister from our church took a few of us down on a cold January night to hear someone that we had read about, we had watched on television, we had seen with our own eyes from a distance, this phenomenon known as Dr. King. He titled the sermon he gave that night "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution." --Hillary Clinton, March 4, 2007, on the 42nd anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma. Following on the controversy about whether Mitt Romney "saw" his father "march" with Martin Luther King Jr., a reader asked me to clarify exactly when Hillary Clinton went to hear the civil rights leader speak, an important event in her teenage years. The New York senator has presented herself http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/12/hillary_and_martin_luther_king.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/12/hillary_and_martin_luther_king.html Candidate Watch Mon, 31 Dec 2007 17:06:50 -0400 Anthony Lake and Madeleine Albright with Bill Clinton, 1997. UPDATED "You could argue that there are more foreign policy experts from the Clinton administration supporting me than Senator Clinton. That should raise some pretty interesting questions" --Barack Obama, Town Hall meeting, Washington, Iowa, December 21, 2007. "Senator Obama is attacking Sen. Clinton by making demonstrably false claims about his foreign policy credentials that only raise more questions about his own lack of experience." -- Clinton spokesman Phil Singer, responding to the Obama statement. Senators Obama and Clinton are dragging us down into the weeds of the federal bureaucacy with this debate. Few voters are likely to be swayed by which campaign can boast the support of the former deputy assistant secretary for Veterans Affairs, but this has become a mano a mano duel at this point. So let the battle commence. In order to shoot down Obama's claim, the http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/12/obama_vs_clinton_on_foreign_po.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/12/obama_vs_clinton_on_foreign_po.html Candidate Watch Thu, 27 Dec 2007 06:00:00 -0400 The leaders of Mexico, U.S., and Canada celebrate the NAFTA agreement. "The impact of NAFTA seems to have been both larger and more positive in Mexico than in the United States. Mexico's gross domestic product, now more than $875 billion, has more than quadrupled since 1987." --Washington Post editorial, December 3, 2007. "If anyone still thought that the Washington Post editorial board could discuss trade in a rational manner, today's editorial on NAFTA proved them wrong. How on earth does the Post get that Mexico's GDP quadrupled when it actually only grew by 67.6 percent?" --Blog by economist Dean Baker, The American Prospect, December 3, 2007. A reader, Alan Abramowitz, asked me to fact check this one, and I am happy to oblige. Headlined "Democratic Candidates Resort to Far Fetched Denunciations of the North American Free Trade Agreement," the Post editorial was part of the "Ideas Primary" series looking http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/12/the_fact_checker_fact_checks_t_1.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/12/the_fact_checker_fact_checks_t_1.html MSM Watch Fri, 07 Dec 2007 09:50:00 -0400 Democratic Debate in Philadelphia, October 30, 2007. "Sen. Obama Shifts On Using American Forces In Iraq To Blunt Iranian Threat" --Posting on Hillary Clinton "The Fact Hub" site, December 4, 2007. "Fact Check: Clinton's False Claim that Obama Shifted on Iran --Posting on Barack Obama "Fact Check" site, December 4, 2007. I don't know about the rest of you, but the true Fact Checker finds these faux "Fact Check" sites quite disorientating. By "faux," I mean that their purpose is not really to set the record straight, but to attack political rivals. Most of the posts on the Hillary Clinton "Fact Hub" site are devoted to attacking Barack Obama. Similarly, over on Obama's "Fact Check" site, the truth-squadding is primarily directed against Clinton. Surprise, surprise. The two posts above--"Obama Shifts" and "Clinton's False Claim"--are models of their kind. Each campaign uses quotes selectively to attack the other side and http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/12/clinton_vs_obama_the_fact_chec.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/12/clinton_vs_obama_the_fact_chec.html Candidate Watch Thu, 06 Dec 2007 08:00:00 -0400 Mitt vs Rudy "Murder went up when [Romney] was governor [of Massachusetts]. Robbery went up. Violent crimes went up." --Rudy Giuliani, quoted in Washington Post, November 26, 2007. "He ([Giuliani] has got a real problem checking facts." --Mitt Romney, quoted in the same article. This is not the first time the two front-runners for the Republican nomination have got into a statistical fist fight. Last month, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney gave very different descriptions of their respective economic records as mayor of New York and governor of Massachusetts. As the primary campaign heats up, they have extended the dispute into the criminal justice field. Giuliani repeated his assault on Romney at various stops on the campaign trail, including interviews with the Washington Post and the Associated Press. A look at the evidence suggests that both candidates are cherry-picking the data to suit their argument. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/11/pinocchios_for_mitt_and_rudy.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/11/pinocchios_for_mitt_and_rudy.html Candidate Watch Tue, 27 Nov 2007 06:00:00 -0400 Dream presidential ticket for UFO believers. "The federal government has not come clean on all that it knows...They don't produce documents on this, they should get it all out...The government has not handled this well over the years, that is a historical fact." --Bill Richardson, interviewed by Chris Matthews on MSNBC, claiming that the US government is witholding information on UFOs, October 30, 2007. "More people in this country have seen UFOs than, I think, approve of George Bush's presidency." --Dennis Kucinich, Democratic presidential debate, October 30, 2007. Last week's media excitement over the claim by Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich to have personally seen a UFO obscured a much more newsworthy story. Bill Richardson alleges UFO coverup! Archives officials wonder if New Mexico governor is living on a different planet!! Top UFO researcher endorses Clinton-Richardson presidential ticket, predicts Democrats will end "UFO truth embargo"!!! The Fact Checker investigates! http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/11/aliens_support_clinton_richard.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/11/aliens_support_clinton_richard.html Candidate Watch Tue, 06 Nov 2007 06:00:00 -0400 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 -0400