A third-party group, the Committee for Truth in Politics, is out with an ad blasting the House’s "Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act." The group, which has no Web site and has made no disclosures to the Federal Election Commission, was created by a North Carolina GOP operative, according to National Public Radio, and is represented by lawyer James Bopp, who sued the FEC on the grounds that the group shouldn’t have to file any kind of spending report to that agency. The ad has run in 35 markets in Arkansas, Connecticut, Colorado, Illinois,... [Read more]
Debunking e-mail rumors today seems to require that one be an image analysis expert. We regularly get requests to say whether pictures are real or a result of Photoshop. While some of the photos are obviously fabricated, like the one of the president and first lady in stereotypical "pimp and ho" getup, others are more subtle. For instance, we found that the picture being circulated as "Obama’s crotch salute" was a real photo, but that the circumstances were being grievously misrepresented. The picture of Obama with Tareq (white suit jacket) and... [Read more]
A lot of talking gets done on the Sunday morning shows, so it’s no surprise that a verbal mishap or two might turn up. For instance, yesterday on CNN’s "State of the Union with John King," Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky dissed the Democratic health care overhaul bills, saying the American people don’t like them either. McConnell, Jan. 31: We know the public is overwhelmingly against the bill. In the NPR poll last week, 20-point difference. Twenty percent more oppose the bill than support it. But McConnell rounded up rather... [Read more]
Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling, at a nationally televised meeting of House Republicans in Baltimore, accused President Obama to his face of running up deficits a dozen times greater than the GOP’s. The president said, "That’s factually just not true, and you know it’s not true," and he invited "any independent fact-checker out there" to assess which man got the facts right. OK, we will. We have to score this one for Obama. Hensarling told a Texas-size whopper — and then tried to claim Republican credit for Blll Clinton’s budget... [Read more]
A section of our story "Obama’s State of the Union Address" was inadvertently dropped when we posted the article Thursday. It shows that Obama spoke a little too sweepingly when he claimed that lobbyists have been cut out of policymaking jobs in his administration. We’ve added the section to the piece, and we include it below: K St. to the White House: Road Almost Closed Obama touted his efforts to change Washington’s ways. Obama: [W]e’ve excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs or seats on federal boards and commissions. Obama, by executive... [Read more]
