Koop’s False Claims

The 93-year-old former surgeon general claims seniors would be 'too old' in the United Kingdom to get a pacemaker or joint replacement. He's wrong.

Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop claims that the United Kingdom’s health care system would consider seniors “too old” to qualify for the artificial joints, heart pacemakers and coronary stent that he’s received in the U.S. U.K. guidelines make clear …

Obama’s State of the Union Address

We find the president strained the facts at times. The Republican response had its problems, too.

President Obama peppered his State of the Union address to Congress and the nation with facts, which were mostly right but sometimes cherry-picked, strained or otherwise misleading. He said “there are about 2 million Americans working right now” because of last year’s stimulus bill. But his own economic advisers say …

Bay State Battle

Ads in race for Kennedy seat leave some false impressions.

In the Massachusetts special election campaign for the Senate seat held by the late Ted Kennedy, the conservative American Future Fund and Democratic state Attorney General Martha Coakley’s campaign are on the air with misleading attack ads. AFF’s ad uses a Coakley quote, “We need to get taxes up,” to portray her as a tax-hiker. But …

Whoppers of 2009

We review the choicest falsehoods from a year that kept us busy.

Although 2009 was not an election year, it kept us exceptionally busy, and led to millions of visits to our site. In this year-end summary, we offer some of the worst examples of the falsehoods we encountered during the first year of the Obama administration. The list of howlers includes the false claim that the stimulus bill would dictate …

Palin vs. Gore Climate Showdown

The former vice president and former vice presidential candidate both offer distortions on global warming.

On Dec. 9, an op-ed by Sarah Palin on climate change ran in the Washington Post. Al Gore responded to Palin’s piece and made some fresh claims of his own later that day in an interview with MSNBC. We find that both engaged in some distortions and have been rightly called out by experts in the field. …