Monthly Archive: January 2013

Harry Reid says GOP bill decouples U.S. credit from spending cuts

“This bill surrenders the hostage Republicans have taken in the past by decoupling the full faith and credit of the United States from cuts to Social Security and Medicare, or anything else.  …  By passing this bill, Republicans are joining Democrats to say we will not hold the full faith and credit of the United States hostage, and we will…
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PolitiFact Texas vs. Louie Gohmert

PolitiFact Texas:  “Contrary to Gohmert’s characterization … Washington was not speaking about citizens arming themselves in case of government tyranny. Quite the opposite: The president and former general was calling for disciplined troops to fight on behalf of the government.” Overview PolitiFact Texas builds a dandy straw man in honor of Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas). The Facts The line from…
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Ne’er the Twain did speak it

Attributed to Mark Twain on Facebook and elsewhere:  “Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool.” The Facts: Mark Twain was the pen name of American author Samuel Clemens (1835-1910).  Quite a few quotations disparaging religion came from Twain, though he was apparently a Presbyterian.  So what about the above quotation that often accompanies a picture…
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Where’s the beef?

Zebra Fact Check logo

Alas!  Sorry for the lack of new content lately.  It’s not for lack of effort, as I’ve been working furiously on a fact check of PolitiFact Texas.  PolitiFact’s fact check had to do with a statement from President George Washington. My research on this one has proved so extensive that I’m planning a fact check entry as well as a…
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PolitiFact vs. Marco Rubio

PolitiFact Florida:  “Marco Rubio tweets that GOP didn’t support Social Security changes”   Overview Fact checker commits fallacy of equivocation in posting false headline. The Facts Marco Rubio’s tweet from 1:16 p.m. on Dec. 20, 2012:   Report that #GOP insisting on changes to social security as part of #fiscalcliff false.BTW those changes are supported by @barackobama.   PolitiFact reports…
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Brooks Jackson and firefighting

Brooks Jackson, the founder of Annenberg Fact Check, published a review in December of his past nine years at FactCheck.org.  Titled “Firefighters, Fact-Checking and American Journalism,” the review focuses largely on the role of the fact checker. Jackson deserves credit for steering what is and has been the best fact-checking organization.  But his defense of mainstream fact checking does much…
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Two new rating icons added

Over the past weekend we created two new icons for use with our rating system. First, we filled the anticipated need for an “out of context” icon. We also added an icon for use with statements that rely on or suggest apples-to-oranges comparisons. More planned changes include a revised front-page presentation as well as  category pages that display only a…
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Fact checking the White House infographic about Plan B

On Dec. 26, Zebra Fact Check published an evaluation of claims by House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi about the Republicans’ “Plan B” for resolving fiscal cliff negotiations. In that article, we noted that the White House put forth a statement similar to Pelosi’s on the official White House blog, and did it with “Get the facts” in the headline. The…
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