Q: What are the facts about the proposed cultural center and mosque near New York’s former World Trade Center?
A: We answer questions we’ve been asked most often by readers about the controversial project.
Stories by D'Angelo Gore
Staff Writer, FactCheck.org
No Pentagon Mosque
Q: Is there a mosque inside the Pentagon?
A: The Pentagon has a non-denominational chapel that holds services for employees who follow various religions.
Nevada Blame Game
Republican Sharron Angle’s latest attack ad gets the facts about Nevada’s miserable economy right, but invites a questionable conclusion.
The ad is called "Please Stop," and it mocks Democratic Sen. Harry Reid’s campaign slogan of "no one can do more" for Nevada. In the ad, Angle concedes that Reid "has done more for Nevada," but she doesn’t mean it in a good way. The ad, which began airing July 21, gets the basic facts right:
Angle says in her ad,
Jerry Brown: ‘A Legacy of Failure?’
Republican Meg Whitman is making false claims about Democrat Jerry Brown’s “lifetime in politics” in an attack ad, her first TV spot of the general election campaign. The two are battling to become the next governor of California. The ad claims that “crime soared” while Brown was mayor of Oakland. That’s false. …
DNC Steals Words Right Out of Steele’s Mouth
Props to Politico’s Ben Smith for spotting the latest misleading ad from the Democratic National Committee. The ad, called "On Their Side," uses selective editing to make it seem as though Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele gives "Wall Street" exclusive credit for creating jobs and building the economy. In fact, Steele was also praising "Main Street" and small businesses, but the DNC edited out those references.
The clip in the ad comes from a June 22 interview on CNBC,
A Mis-tweet from McMahon
Linda McMahon’s U.S. Senate campaign recently used the social networking site Twitter to misrepresent former Rep. Robert Simmons’ position on tax credits for businesses and the dividend tax. McMahon and Simmons are battling in Connecticut to become the GOP nominee for Chris Dodd’s Senate seat.
Shawn McCoy, deputy communications director for the McMahon campaign, tweeted the following on May 11:
@RobSimmons supports hiking the dividends tax and opposes biz tax credits. No wonder CT lost 15,000 jobs while he was biz advocate
But Simmons does support giving tax credits to businesses and extending the Bush tax cuts including the dividend tax,
Retrofit, Energy License Not Required
The House of Representatives passed H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act in June 2009. A chain e-mail that has been forwarded to us repeatedly in recent days says that the bill would require homeowners to retrofit their houses to meet new energy standards, and obtain a license from the Environmental Protection Agency before they could sell a home. Don’t believe it. The claims are false.
In fact, we said last summer that claims that the bill requires such things were false in our Ask FactCheck titled "Energy Bill and Exisiting Homes."
Sunday Replay
During his first appearance on CBS’ "Face the Nation" on April 18, Republican Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts claimed that the financial regulatory bill could potentially cost insurance companies in his state 25,000 to 35,000 jobs. But the freshman senator has failed to provide any support for the claim, and we have been unable to find any elsewhere.
Brown didn’t provide the source of the estimate when host Bob Schieffer inquired about it. And our calls to the senator’s office haven’t been returned.
Tussling Over TARP
A recent TV ad from Arkansas Lt. Governor Bill Halter claims that Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln "says she voted against bailing out Wall Street." That’s not what Lincoln said. The two are campaigning in the Democratic primary for the Senate.
Halter’s ad refers to a Lincoln campaign ad from March in which she said she has voted against "giving more money to Wall Street."
Lincoln never denied voting in favor of the 2008 Troubled Assets Relief Program,
Jumping to Conclusions About Census Participation
Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina is fearful that "blatant misinformation coming from otherwise well-meaning conservatives" is affecting the rate at which conservatives return their 2010 Census forms. So concerned that he wrote an op-ed for RedState, a conservative news blog, where he claimed that "[e]arly census returns are showing that conservatives have been measurably less likely than liberals to return their census forms." But as our friends at Politifact wrote, there currently isn’t any evidence to support the claim.