http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/ en-us Copyright 2008 Thu, 08 May 2008 11:55:00 -0400 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.36 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Karl Rove and friend. Columbus, Ohio: You boldly predicted that Bush's approval ratings would rebound -- instead he is, according to Gallup, the most unpopular president in history. Will you finally admit that your vision for this nation has been overwhelmingly rejected by the majority of the people? Karl Rove: Get your facts right -- there are at least three president who had worse approval ratings, Truman, Johnson and Nixon. I'm absolutely positive history will be kind to this president, who made the right decisions in a difficult time for this nation. --Karl Rove online washingtonpost.com chat, May 7, 2008 Karl Rove, the much-acclaimed "architect" of George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 election victories, claimed that a Washington Post reader got his facts wrong during an online discussion Wednesday. But the Gallup organization does indeed report that Bush's disapproval rating reached an all-time high of 69 percent in April, http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/05/how_unpopular_is_george_bush.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/05/how_unpopular_is_george_bush.html Web Watch Thu, 08 May 2008 11:55:00 -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 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 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 Howard Wolfson on Face the Nation, Feb. 17, 2008. The Fact Checker: "To be very clear about this, [Hillary Clinton] is going to stick to this plan that she has devised of bringing one to two brigades out [of Iraq] a month, whatever the realities on the ground. Is that correct?" Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson: "You are asking a question and I am giving you a one-word answer so we can be clear about this. The answer is yes." --Clinton campaign teleconference, March 17, 2008. Ever since she started running for president, Hillary Clinton has tried to preserve some wriggle room in promising to "end the Iraq war." At first, she was hesitant to provide any kind of timetable for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq. Then she said that she would start withdrawing troops within 60 days of becoming president. Under pressure from her Democratic party rivals, she http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/iraq_truthtelling_part_ii_1.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/iraq_truthtelling_part_ii_1.html Candidate Watch Tue, 18 Mar 2008 06:00:00 -0400 TV debate between Clinton and Lazio, Sept. 13, 2000 I'm a little busy right now; I hardly have time to sleep. But I will certainly work toward releasing [my tax returns], and we will get that done and in the public domain." --Hillary Clinton, MSNBC debate, Cleveland, Ohio, Feb. 26, 2008. The Clinton camp has been trying to make hay on the income tax returns issue for weeks. During a campaign stop in Ithaca on July 7, the first lady said she found Lazio's failure to make public his returns "frankly disturbing." --Associated Press report, Aug. 3, 2000. During her 2000 New York Senate campaign, Hillary Clinton made a big issue out of her Republican opponent's failure to release his tax returns. Former congressman Rick Lazio eventually relented, but only after the Clinton campaign dispatched volunteers dressed as Uncle Sam to picket his public appearances. Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/taxing_questions_for_clinton.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/taxing_questions_for_clinton.html Candidate Watch Fri, 07 Mar 2008 06:00:00 -0400 Chicago Police photos of William Ayers in 1968 "William Ayers, in the age of terrorism, will be Barack Obama's Willie Horton." --Former counterterrorism official Larry C. Johnson, The Huffington Post, Feb. 16, 2008. There has been a sudden spate of blog items and newspaper articles, mainly in the British press, linking Barack Obama to a former member of the radical Weather Underground Organization that claimed responsibility for a dozen bombings between 1970 and 1974. The former Weatherman, William Ayers, now holds the position of distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Although never convicted of any crime, he told the New York Times in September 2001, "I don't regret setting bombs...I feel we didn't do enough." Both Obama and Ayers were members of the board of an anti-poverty group, the Woods Fund of Chicago, between 1999 and 2002. In addition, Ayers contributed $200 to Obama's re-election fund http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/obamas_weatherman_connection.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/obamas_weatherman_connection.html Candidate Watch Tue, 19 Feb 2008 06:00:00 -0400 Election night at Obama HQ, Feb. 5, 2008. "We have earned more delegates, won more votes, and won more states [than the Clinton campaign]" --Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, conference call with reporters, Feb. 7, 2008. Most news organizations, including The Washington Post, are showing Hillary Clinton slightly ahead of Barack Obama in delegates to the Democratic Convention. So how can the Obama campaign claim that it is ahead? The answer lies in the mind-boggling complexity of the Democratic nomination process, with rules that vary from state to state and several different categories of delegates. Some states that voted on Super Tuesday have yet to apportion all their delegates and it will take some time before anybody can come up with precise figures. A big fight lies ahead over whether to seat delegates from Florida and Michigan who were disenfranchised by the Democratic National Committee for holding early elections. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/who_has_the_most_delegates.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/who_has_the_most_delegates.html Candidate Watch Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:55:34 -0400 GOP debate in Florida, Jan. 24 Last night's GOP debate from Boca Raton, Florida, was a generally civil affair. The candidates avoided challenging each other's records directly, and did not get involved in factual disputes. Nevertheless, they still made a number of questionable statements, particularly on foreign policy. A sampler: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/the_gop_debate_in_florida.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/the_gop_debate_in_florida.html Candidate Watch Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:20:57 -0400 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 -0400 Iranian President Ahmadinejad visits nuclear enrichment facility, April 2007. "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program...A growing amount of intelligence indicates Iran was engaged in covert uranium conversion and uranium enrichment activity, but we judge that these efforts probably were halted in response to the fall 2003 halt, and that these efforts probably had not been restarted through at least mid-2007." --National Intelligence Estimate, released December 3, 2007. There has been a lot of loose talk about Iran's nuclear capabilities out on the campaign trail. Here is a sampling of campaign rhetoric undercut by the publication of the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, representing the consensus view of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/12/bomb_bomb_bomb_bomb_bomb_iran_1.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/12/bomb_bomb_bomb_bomb_bomb_iran_1.html Candidate Watch Tue, 04 Dec 2007 06:00:45 -0400 Giuliani announcing fall in crime rate as mayor of New York "Under Mayor Giuliani's leadership, overall crime was cut by 56 percent, murder was cut by 66 percent, and New York City--once considered the crime capital of the country--became the safest large city in America according to the FBI." --Join Rudy 2008 website Rudy Giuliani has made the dramatic drop in the New York City crime rate a central theme of his presidential campaign. He has been critical of rivals, such as Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, for being lax on crime. Violent crimes fell sharply between 1994 and 2001 while he was mayor and have continued to fall under his successor, Michael Bloomberg. But the crime rate also fell sharply in other large U.S. cities, such as Los Angeles and Chicago. Has he exaggerated his own achievement? http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/11/rudy_the_crime_buster.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/11/rudy_the_crime_buster.html Candidate Watch Thu, 29 Nov 2007 06:00:00 -0400 Mexican Marines guard large cocaine haul in November "It's unprecedented...This is not only the deepest shortage [in the retail cocaine market] but it's the longest we have seen." --White House Drug Czar John Walters,`interview with Washington Post, November 9, 2007. "We've never had disruptions of this magnitude before." --Walters press conference in Bogota, Colombia, November 7, 2007. A reality check in the "war on drugs." Drug Czar John Walters touted similar disruptions to the cocaine market in the United States back in 2005, but the progress turned out to be short-lived. Is there any reason we should believe him this time? Unfortunately, the statistical methodology used by his office and the Drug Enforcement Administration is extremely opaque. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/11/is_there_a_cocaine_shortage_1.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/11/is_there_a_cocaine_shortage_1.html Gov Watch Wed, 21 Nov 2007 06:00:00 -0400 Ron Paul is attracting increasing media attention. "You don't have to get rid of all of the government. If you got rid of the income tax, you would still have enough revenues which were about equivalent to what we had in the year 2000." --Ron Paul, Jay Leno TV show, October 31, 2007. "I realize that Ron Paul doesn't lie enough to make for entertaining reading on this site, but at least put his name on the Candidates' list." --Aaron Hanson, Ron Paul supporter from Minneapolis, message to the Fact Checker, November 7, 2007 Ok Paulites, we hear you. Your man has not been getting enough MSM attention. A candidate needs at least three Pinocchios from the Fact Checker to be taken seriously in the 2008 campaign. Now that Paul has raised more money on-line in a single day than any other candidate in the current election cycle, he http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/11/ron_paul_faces_11_trillion_bud.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/11/ron_paul_faces_11_trillion_bud.html Candidate Watch Thu, 08 Nov 2007 06:00:00 -0400 "Let's see now. This is my wife calling ... Hello dear. I'm talking, I'm talking to the members of the NRA right now. Would you like to say hello? I love you -- and I'll give you a call as soon as I'm finished. OK? OK, have a safe trip. Bye bye ... Talk to you later, dear. I love you." --Rudy Giuliani, addressing the National Rifle Association, September 21, 2007 What's up with Giuliani and cell phones? Was this a warm, fuzzy moment with his wife Judith or was it a clever piece of public relations manipulation designed to "humanize" the candidate? http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/10/let_rudy_be_rudy.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2007/10/let_rudy_be_rudy.html Candidate Watch Mon, 08 Oct 2007 08:15:47 -0400