On Nov. 3, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed into law a bill declaring that the third Monday of January, starting in 1986, would be recognized as the Martin Luther King, Jr. national holiday.
Source: The King Center
January 17, 2010
Haiti declared its independence from France on Jan. 1, 1804.
Source: CIA World Factbook
January 16, 2010
Thirty-eight percent of Haiti’s 9,035,536 people are aged 14 and younger.
Source: CIA World Factbook
Medicare board: Unrepealable?
Q: Does the Senate’s health bill contain a provision that can’t be repealed?
A: No. It would create an Independent Medicare Advisory Board that could be repealed by a vote of three-fifths of the Senate.
January 15, 2010
In Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, only 20 percent of the population lives above the poverty line.
Source: CIA World Factbook
January 14, 2010
Haiti is slightly smaller than the state of Maryland.
Source: CIA World Factbook
Bay State Battle
In the Massachusetts special election campaign for the Senate seat held by the late Ted Kennedy, the conservative American Future Fund and Democratic state Attorney General Martha Coakley’s campaign are on the air with misleading attack ads. AFF’s ad uses a Coakley quote, “We need to get taxes up,” to portray her as a tax-hiker. But …
January 13, 2010
About 25 percent of adults aged 19 to 64 have ever received a pneumococcal vaccination, and 60 percent of adults aged 65 years and older have received the vaccine.
Source: CDC
FactCheck Mailbag, Week of Jan. 5-Jan. 11
This week, readers sent us comments on small business lawsuits, climate data, requests for a TV show and high praise from the Army. 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.
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,