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Viral Spiral
FactCheck Mailbag
FactCheck Mailbag, Week of March 19-25.
See letters from previous weeks“ Criticizing the Democrats for citing the only available study on gun purchases for its age seems wide of the target. ” -
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2012 Players Guide
Author Archives: Brooks Jackson
Sunday Morning Missteps
Summary The Republican presidential candidates debated – and sounded some more false notes: Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney falsely claimed U.S. job growth had been nearly 17 times faster than Europe’s. Actually, European Union employment grew faster than that of the U.S. last year. Romney’s source for the information told …
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Posted in Articles
Tagged John McCain, Mitt Romney, Presidential Election 2008, Republican presidential primary, Rudy Giuliani, Tom Tancredo
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GOP Candidates Debate, Round 2
Summary Claims, facts and figures flew at the second GOP presidential debate of 2008. Not all were true. For example: Mitt Romney claimed he didn’t raise taxes when he was governor of Massachusetts, failing to note that he increased government fees by hundreds of millions of dollars and shifted some …
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Posted in Articles
Tagged adoption, Duncan Hunter, FairTax, global warming, GOP debate, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, taxes, Tom Tancredo, Tommy Thompson
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Levitating Numbers
Summary In an earlier article we criticized Rudy Giuliani for saying adoptions went up 65 to 70 percent when he was mayor, when in fact adoptions at the end of his tenure were only 17 percent higher than at the start, and falling. His campaign still insists his claim is …
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Republican Candidates Debate
Summary Ten Republican candidates for president debated at the Reagan Library in California, the first GOP debate of the 2008 campaign. Here and there we found stumbles, spin and exaggerations, just as we did at the Democratic debate a week earlier. Giuliani claimed that adoptions shot up 65 to 70 …
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Posted in Articles
Tagged Duncan Hunter, John McCain, Mitt Romney, presidential campaign 2008, Rudy Giuliani
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False Ads: There Oughta Be A Law! – Or Maybe Not
(This article was originally posted June 3, 2004. We are reissuing it now, updated only to fix bad links and such. Politicians still can lie legally, and the high volume of ads expected in 2008 campaigns makes it likely that voters will be exposed to more deception than ever. —B.J.) …
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Kerry Really Could Produce 10 Million New Jobs. (So Could Bush.)
John Kerry has promised that, if elected, his economic policies will produce 10 million new jobs. Some FactCheck.org subscribers have asked us why we haven’t de-bunked that claim, given that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) counted only 8.4 million who were unemployed as of March. Most recently, "Rich" wrote …
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Lies in the E-mail, Part 2
Since my first article on lying e-mails, I’ve gotten dozens of inquiries about a snarky little message blaming Democrats alone for all sorts of bad changes to Social Security. I’m calling it "Lying E-mail #2" because it is so full of laughably inaccurate claims. Who Taxed Benefits? The most glaring …
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What To Do When Your Friend’s E-mail Lies To You.
Let me put the matter bluntly: an awful lot of the e-mailed messages zipping around the Internet are lies — and too many are being sent on by gullible, lazy friends who ought to know better. These falsehoods are multiplying like viruses as recipients forward them to their entire list …
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Are Candidates Swearing Off ‘Attack Ads?’ Maybe This Reform is Working.
Where are all the nasty, personal, negative TV spots? Candidates seem to be reluctant to run them — and there’s a reason. A new law requires presidential candidates to appear in their own ads and take personal responsibility for what they say. The idea behind this new "stand by your …
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