Former Nevada state Sen. Sue Lowden, who is running for the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in November, goes after Reid in a new ad for trying to force "one-size-fits-all government health care" on all Americans. Maybe "one-size-fits-all government health care" is a plausible description of the systems in some other countries: Canada or the U.K., for instance. But the Senate-passed health care overhaul, which Reid shepherded... Click to read more
Summary We tuned in to watch the president’s health care summit at Blair House today — all six-plus hours of it. And we weren’t surprised to hear some factual missteps in the discussion: Sen. Lamar Alexander said premiums will go up for “millions” under the Senate bill and president’s plan, while President Barack Obama said families buying the same coverage they have now would pay much less. Both were misleading. The Congressional Budget Office said premiums... Click to read more
When the White House and congressional Democrats agreed last month to scale back a Senate-passed tax on high-value health plans, it was widely portrayed as a giveaway to labor unions. For example, the New York Post reported that it was a "sweetheart deal" that would save union members $60 billion, and on its editorial page called it a "bribe" and a "big, fat wet kiss for labor unions," a view quickly echoed by Republican leaders. Now a new analysis challenges that view... Click to read more
Summary Vice President Biden and former V.P. Cheney have been slugging it out publicly over the proper way to prosecute suspected terrorists. Biden went so far as to accuse Cheney of being "factually, substantively wrong." So we took a look, and found both men have been straining the facts: Cheney said that shoe bomber Richard Reid was tried in civilian court rather than a military tribunal "primarily because he pleaded guilty." In fact, 10 months passed between Reid’s... Click to read more
Summary Sarah Palin made a splash over the weekend as the keynote speaker at the first National Tea Party convention, and she followed up with an interview on Fox News Sunday. But she didn’t always stick to the facts. Palin implied that the Nigerian would-be Christmas Day bomber stopped talking after he was read his Miranda rights. He did, but not for good. He began talking again extensively after counterterrorism agents enlisted the help of his family, and he has provided information on all... Click to 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... Click to 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... Click to read more
Summary President Obama peppered his State of the Union address to Congress and the nation with facts, which were mostly right but sometimes cherry-picked, strained or otherwise misleading. He said “there are about 2 million Americans working right now” because of last year’s stimulus bill. But his own economic advisers say the total could be as little as 1.5 million, and independent estimates range down to as low as 800,000. He quoted the Congressional Budget Office as saying... Click to read more
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 today that corporations can spend as freely as they like in federal elections, a decision that could bring a flood of new ads expressly favoring or opposing candidates in the congressional midterm elections this year. The opinion in the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission throws out a 63-year-old law that attempted to restrain the influence of business and labor in elections and overturns two of the Court’s own decisions. Corporations will now be... Click to read more
Last week we barely dipped our toe in the torrent of ads blanketing Massachusetts, where voters are going to the polls today to decide who will replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy: Democrat Martha Coakley or Republican Scott Brown. There have been more since in the close race, too many for us to keep up with. But we found one single-issue flier sent out by the Massachusetts Democratic Party particularly offensive and off-base. The background of the flier shows blurry images of women on which these... Click to read more
