Former GOP presidential nominee John McCain is running attack ads again — this time against a fellow Republican who may contest his Senate seat this year.
Hotline’s Reid Wilson has the script for a new radio spot McCain is running against former congressman (and current Arizona radio personality) J.D Hayworth, who has been making moves toward a primary challenge against McCain.
The ad says that Hayworth "sounds conservative on the radio, but J.D. was one of the biggest spenders in Congress.
Court’s Decision: Keep FactCheck Busy
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.
Axelrod Wrong on Health Care Ads Claim
White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod incorrectly claimed that Republican Scott Brown “didn’t run one ad on health care in the entire campaign” against Democrat Martha Coakley. In fact, a Brown campaign TV spot attacking health care legislation ran heavily in the days before Tuesday’s Senate election in Massachusetts.
Axelrod, in an appearance alongside White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown” on Wednesday, was trying to play down the role of the health care issue in Brown’s upset victory.
More Mischief in Massachusetts
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 words are superimposed: "1,736 women were raped in Massachusetts in 2008.
Counting Conundrum
We’ve been questioning the Obama administration’s claim that the stimulus bill would "save or create more than 3.5 million jobs" since the president began saying it. In February, we pointed out that although several economists made such a projection, they all said there was a lot of uncertainty surrounding these estimates. Late last year, the administration’s effort to count actual stimulus-created (or saved) jobs was plagued by the reporting of jobs in nonexistent congressional districts. And now,
Mirror Image
The rumor that President Barack Obama refuses, or doesn’t know how, to say the pledge of allegiance just won’t die. Since early in his presidential candidacy, we’ve been getting e-mails with photos that purport to show Obama failing to properly salute the flag during the pledge of allegiance or the national anthem. The photos have reliably been real, but taken out of context. The most recent example, for instance, included a genuine photo of Obama standing with hands folded while everyone else saluted or put their hands over their hearts —
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.
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,
Health Care and the Founding Fathers
Expect January to be dominated by House-Senate wrangling over the final shape of the gargantuan bill to overhaul the nation’s health insurance system.
Some opponents of the measures, though, are readying themselves for another potential fight, this one in the courts. An Arkansas group called the Conservative Action Project says it believes the overhaul is unconstitutional, and it is preparing to sue to stop it from taking effect, according to several conservative blogs (we attempted to reach someone at the organization but were unsuccessful).