Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina has been attacking incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer since well before June 8, when Fiorina hoped to lock up the Republican Senate nomination in California. Her latest ad went up just a few days before the primary and falsely accuses Boxer of neglecting terrorism in favor of the weather report.
"One of the very important national security issues we face, frankly, is climate change," Boxer says in a 2007 clip shown in the ad.
This week, readers sent us comments about Arizona’s S.B. 1070, Obama’s birth certificate and FactCheck’s official seal of approval.
In the FactCheck Mailbag, we feature some of the e-mail we receive. Readers can send comments to editor@factcheck.org. Letters may be edited for length.
This Sunday’s round of political talk shows left a few misimpressions, among them the notion that nothing like the BP blowout had happened before. We clear up the confusion.
Barbour on Blowouts
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told "Fox News Sunday" viewers that the BP oil spill is the first time that "anything like this" has happened. Actually, a similar offshore blowout occurred in 1979, gushing thousands of barrels of crude oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico,
In New Jersey’s 3rd congressional district, Republican candidate Jon Runyan made an early attack on Democratic incumbent John Adler in a campaign flier he released June 1. The flier exaggerates when it says Adler “created” the state’s estate tax, and makes true, but misleading, claims about the congressman’s votes on taxpayer funding for needle exchange programs and the repeal of the state’s death penalty. The flier also provides no specific citations to backup any of its statements.
In the final week of Arkansas’ June 8 runoff campaign for the Democratic Senate nomination, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter is running a misleading ad against Sen. Blanche Lincoln that accuses her of "cutting Social Security" and threatening to cut Medicare and Social Security in the future. For sure, there are differences between the two candidates. Lincoln is a strong supporter of reducing the deficit, and is on record as wanting to find "greater efficiencies" in entitlement programs,
In episode 14 of FactCheck Radio, we take a look at the controversial Arizona immigration law. We also examine an ad from Nevada that claims a Senate candidate supported Scientology-sponsored saunas and massage treatments in prisons.
(Click the play button below to listen to the podcast. Or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.)
For more on the stories discussed in this episode, see:
Arizona’s ‘Papers Please’ Law June 3
It’s True: Massages, Saunas For Inmates June 2
We’ll leave it to others to decide whether Arizona’s new immigration law is a good thing or a bad thing — but here we try to straighten out some of the confusing factual claims. First, a quick summary. Contrary to what the law’s defenders often say, the new statute does more than merely mirror federal law. For example …
With the June 8 Nevada primary nearing, there was one TV ad in the Republican Senate race that caught our attention. It’s so outlandish that we thought it couldn’t possibly be true. Did former Nevada Assemblywoman Sharron Angle – a Republican backed by the Tea Party Express and the fiscally conservative Club for Growth — sponsor legislation to create a drug rehab program for state prisoners that included saunas and massage therapy? And was that program developed by the Church of Scientology?
Did someone in the White House commit a federal misdemeanor by getting involved in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary? A leading Republican House member says yes, but he’s contradicted by a former U.S. attorney general from the Bush administration.
That’s our first subject in this holiday-delayed issue of "Sunday Replay," where we regularly dissect factual claims made on weekend public affairs shows. We also fact-checked a few statements about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
This week, readers sent us comments about VA benefits, endangered jobs and partial immigrants.
In the FactCheck Mailbag, we feature some of the e-mail we receive. Readers can send comments to editor@factcheck.org. Letters may be edited for length.