Q: Is Congress exempt from “many” laws including one against sexual harassment?
A: No. The latest e-mail rant against Congress — proposing a “28th Amendment” to the Constitution — is full of false and outdated claims.
Stories by Brooks Jackson
Director Emeritus, FactCheck.org
Obama’s State of the Union Address
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 …
No Trial for Obama
Q: Is federal judge David O. Carter starting a trial on Jan. 26 to determine whether Obama is qualified to be president?
A: No. This is yet another bogus claim circulated by persons who cling to a belief that Obama was not born in the U.S.A. The judge threw the case out of court back in October.
Clueless ‘Columbo’
Q: What’s up with “Columbo” and his questions for Obama?
A: The interrogator in a chain e-mail gets his facts fouled up and makes false accusations.
A ‘Trifecta’ of Nonsense
The latest anti-Obama rant to show up in e-mail inboxes accuses President Obama of an “unholy” and “anti-American” series of omissions, which it claims no other president has committed. But the fact is, Obama was just doing the same thing that Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush had done in similar circumstances.
It’s a brief e-mail that first showed up in our inbox Jan. 5:
Subject: Obama Trifecta
President Obama just completed the UNHOLY and ANTI-AMERICAN TRIFECTA:
1st president in 110 years to miss the annual Army-Navy Football Game.
Retribution Fabrication
Q: Did Congress raise its own pay for 2010 while voting to deny an increase for Social Security recipients?
A: No. A chain e-mail calling for "retribution" in the fall elections makes false claims and uses fabricated figures.
U.S. Chamber: More Lawsuit Malarkey
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is running a false ad claiming that "52 percent of all lawsuits" target small businesses. The claim is contradicted by the very study the Chamber cites as its source, and it’s not even close to the truth. The study shows the true figure is somewhere between 5 percent and 8 percent.
A spokesman for the Chamber, Mark Szymanski, told us the ad began airing "nationally" in late December and will continue to air until the end of January.
MoveOn.org: Starved for Facts
Would you believe that one in six Americans is "going hungry"?
You shouldn’t, because it’s not true.
Nevertheless, the liberal group MoveOn.org claimed something close to that in an end-of-the-year appeal for donations to Feeding America, the national anti-hunger charity. MoveOn’s message said: "This winter, a record 49 million Americans are going hungry because of the economy." (To read the whole fundraising appeal, click the link below.)
Dear MoveOn member,
"I’m sure we’re going to run out of food today,
Obama’s Economic Speech
We’re always alert for signs that the president (any president) is overselling his programs. Here’s what we heard in President Obama’s speech on Tuesday announcing new efforts to create jobs: He highlighted a Congressional Budget Office estimate that “up to” 1.6 million jobs …
Truth on the Cutting Room Floor
A widely viewed video seems to show President Obama stating that he is a Muslim. It is false, and the product of dishonest editing. Although it is titled “Obama Admits He Is A Muslim,” the president in fact has admitted no such thing. The video edits and twists his actual words, sometimes turning what were denials into …