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Kirk, Giannoulias Misstate Facts in Debate

The Illinois Senate candidates strayed from the facts on Sunday’s "Meet the Press," which featured a debate between Republican Mark Kirk, a House member, and Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, the state treasurer.
Bridge Claims Go Nowhere
Kirk exaggerated his role in combating the "bridge to nowhere," a name given interchangeably to two Alaska bridge projects that have become symbols for government pork:

Kirk: "The Kirk Amendment passed in the House … attacked the bridge to nowhere,

Stop the @#%! ‘Profanity’

Do "bleep" and "@#%!" count as low-down, shocking "profanity"? Michele Bachmann says they do.
The GOP House member from Minnesota is claiming in a fundraising appeal to conservative donors that her Democratic election opponent, Tarryl Clark, released a "shocking, profanity-laced attack against me" and has thus reached "a new low."
Here’s the video in question. (It’s a satirical Web video, not a real TV ad.) Readers can judge for themselves how "shocking" it is.

The ad’s narrator says,

FactCheck Mailbag, Week of Oct. 5-Oct. 11

This week, readers sent us comments about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, left-leaning semantics, stimulus efficiency and FactCheck business cards.
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.

60 Plus Association

Republican-leaning group that calls itself “the conservative alternative” to AARP.

Toss-ups: Missouri Mudslinging

Ethics has become a theme in the Missouri Senate race, and we find that both candidates are distorting the facts in TV ads that make accusations of serious ethical lapses: Republican Rep. Roy Blunt claims without evidence that Democrat Robin Carnahan’s …

Sunday Replay

Pity the poor politicians and spinmeisters who had to don suits in the middle of a long weekend and populate the talk shows. They were up to their usual tricks, though: One Republican operative wrongly implied a crime by the White House; several guests talked about the debt or deficit in ways that were deceptive; and a House incumbent made the jobs picture under President Obama sound better than it is in reality.
Obama ‘Enemies List’

Foreign Money? Really?

Democrats, from President Barack Obama on down, are trying to turn an evidence-free allegation into a major campaign theme, claiming that foreign corporations are “stealing our democracy” with secret, illegal contributions funneled …

A New Twist on an Old Tax Attack

Democrats and their allies can’t get enough of the Americans for Tax Reform tax pledge — which, as we’ve reported, they’ve falsely equated in a number of ads with “protecting tax loopholes for companies that ship jobs overseas.” Still, Democrats continue …

Angle’s Shocking – and Misleading – Viagra Claim

A new ad from Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle says that Angle’s opponent, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, "voted to use taxpayer dollars to pay for Viagra for convicted child molesters and sex offenders." That sensational claim hasn’t gotten any more true since the first time we addressed it, shortly after the health care bill was passed.

It’s true that Reid voted to table an amendment that would have barred convicted sex offenders from getting coverage for drugs like Viagra from health plans sold through state-based exchanges.