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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: Jess Henig
Ammunition Accountability Act
Q:Are states going to require serial numbers on bullets and require disposal of existing ammunition? A:Such a proposal is being pushed by a company that holds a patent on bullet-coding technology. But none of the 31 bills introduced last year ever made it out of committee.
Nancy Pelosi’s Personal Jet
Q: Did Nancy Pelosi order up a 200-seat jet for her personal use? A: The Democratic House speaker normally flies in a 12-seat Air Force jet, just as her Republican predecessor did. This rumor stems from a request by the House sergeant at arms, not Pelosi, for a jet large …
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Posted in Ask FactCheck
Tagged campaign finance, chain e-mail, military, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, taxpayer
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Special Favors from Nancy Pelosi?
Q: Did Nancy Pelosi get wage breaks and tax credits for the American Samoan operations of a company in which her husband owns $17 million worth of stock? A: This widely e-mailed claim is false. Pelosi’s husband doesn’t own that stock, despite what a bogus Wikipedia entry briefly claimed. Furthermore, American Samoa …
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40% of Americans Pay No Taxes?
Q: Do 40 percent of Americans pay no taxes? A: About 38 percent of households have zero or negative income tax liability, but they pay other federal taxes.
No Personal Use of Campaign Money
Q: Can the presidential candidates keep their campaign money? A: No. They can donate any contributions they haven’t spent to charities or political parties, and they can pay leftover campaign bills. The big rule is: no personal use.
2008 FactCheck Awards
Politics is bizarre. Nobody knows that better than we do. But sometimes the real twisted weirdness is subtle and complicated, taking days of research and interviews to tease out – and other times it’s right on the surface, in the form of a hippie in a suit and tie or a close-up shot of dog feces. For those readers who’ve stuck with us through a lot of in-depth reporting on complex issues, we offer these just-for-fun awards for some of the most entertaining, most egregious, most off-the-wall or just plain grossest ads this election cycle.
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Michelle Obama’s Room Service?
Q: Did Michelle Obama spend $450 on room service? A: No. The claim is a total fabrication, and the sources that publicized it have retracted the story.
Obama’s Citizenship and the Survival of the Fittest
Yesterday we posted something about the evolution of rumors. Here’s a postscript: Sometimes in addition to developing new eyespots or camouflage, they actually engage in a little adaptive development — rumors that aren’t working mutate into slightly altered versions that haven’t been debunked yet. A case in point: First there …
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Life Cycle of a Rumor
One thing we’ve noticed at FactCheck is that e-mail rumors tend to circulate, get debunked (ideally), go dormant for a while, and then flare up again. Think of it as a horde of zombies — they come at you, you kill them, you breathe a sigh of relief, and then …
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