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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
Haggling Over Hagel’s Record
An ad from a pro-Israel group oversimplifies Chuck Hagel’s foreign policy positions in an attempt to portray Obama’s choice for secretary of defense as soft on Iran. The ad claims Hagel voted against sanctions on Iran. It’s true that Hagel opposed unilateral U.S. sanctions, but he has voiced support for …
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Posted in The FactCheck Wire
Tagged Chuck Hagel, Emergency Committee for Israel, Iran, Secretary of Defense
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McConnell Fudges Fiscal Facts, Too
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell twisted some fiscal facts in his appearances on the Sunday talk show circuit: McConnell said the Obama administration has “driven spending as a percentage of our economy from 21 percent up to almost 25 percent.” But it was already projected to be almost 25 percent …
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Posted in The FactCheck Wire
Tagged debt, federal spending, Fiscal Cliff, Mitch McConnell, taxes
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Our Annual Year-end Appeal
During the presidential campaign, the Obama campaign emailed fundraising appeals with subject lines such as “This is critical” and “Absolutely urgent” to lament how the Democrats were being outraised and outspent by Republicans. But here’s something to consider: The Obama and Romney campaigns combined raised a record amount of more …
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Posted in The FactCheck Wire
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Fiscal Cliff Air Wars
The presidential election ended last month, but the partisan air wars continue with competing fiscal cliff ads from the conservative Crossroads GPS and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Most of what is in the ads falls into the realm of opinion, but we found a couple points to quibble with …
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Dueling Fiscal Cliff Deceptions
A fog of misinformation has settled on the fiscal cliff, as both House Speaker John Boehner and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner have traded conflicting, misleading and false statements in recent days on the president’s deficit-reduction plan: Geithner falsely claimed on “Fox News Sunday” that the president’s proposals to slow Medicare …
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Posted in The FactCheck Wire
Tagged Fiscal Cliff, John Boehner, medicare, spending cuts, taxes, Timothy Geithner
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Durbin (Again) Denies Social Security’s Red Ink
Sen. Richard Durbin says that “Social Security does not add one penny to our debt.” That’s false. It was wrong 21 months ago, when Durbin said it once before, and it’s even more off the mark now. The federal government for the first time in its history had to borrow …
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Group’s ‘Obamacare Tax Form’ Evades Facts
A conservative group misleads taxpayers on the Affordable Care Act and the Internal Revenue Service’s future role in enforcing it. Americans for Tax Reform posted a “projected” IRS tax form on its website that claims to “help families and tax specialists prepare” for new tax provisions under the health care …
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Facts Falling Off the Fiscal Cliff
In press conferences on the so-called fiscal cliff, House Speaker John Boehner greatly exaggerated the negative effect on the economy of raising taxes on upper-income individuals. Boehner erred when he said that “the problem with raising tax rates on the wealthiest Americans is that more than half of them are …
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Posted in The FactCheck Wire
Tagged Deficits, Fiscal Cliff, John Boehner, small business
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Obama’s Numbers, Updated
In the interest of timeliness and accuracy, we are issuing an updated version of “Obama’s Numbers,” our collection of key measures of the president’s time in office. A few things have changed since we published our original version Oct. 8 — some for better, and some for worse. The number …
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Posted in The FactCheck Wire
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