Back when he was courting voters, then-candidate Barack Obama boasted that his health care plan would save the typical family "up to $2,500" a year. And May 13, as President Obama, he repeated the claim, this time relying both on undefined "comprehensive reform" and a cost-control promise by the insurance and medical industries to garner such benefits:
Obama, May 13: On Monday I met with representatives of the insurance and the drug companies, doctors and hospitals,
Cherrapunji Assam, India, has amassed several world records for precipitation. In two years, 1860 and 1861, it recorded 1,605.05 inches.
Source: NOAA
Q: Would the "hate crimes" bill make it a crime to denounce homosexuality from the pulpit and give legal protection to pedophiles?
A: No on both counts. The First Amendment is still operative, and pedophiles would get no breaks under this bill.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney used his May 10 appearance on CBS’ "Face the Nation" to, once again, strongly defend the Bush administration’s handling of alleged terrorists taken into U.S. custody. At one point, to back up his characterization of Guantanamo Bay detainees as ultra-bad guys, Cheney claimed that detainees sent home from Gitmo had already demonstrated significant recidivism: "We released hundreds already of the less threatening types. About 12 percent of them, nonetheless, went back into the fight as terrorists."
The world record for the amount of rain to fall in 1 minute is 1.5 inches in Barot Guadeloupe, West Indies, on Nov. 26, 1970.
Source: NOAA
After we posted our April 17 story ("Counting Mexico’s Guns") pointing out the absence of data to back up statements from Obama administration officials (including the president), journalists and others that 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the U.S, we still had a few questions about the tracing process. At the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), we sat down with Charles Houser, chief of the agency’s National Tracing Center,
The most precipitation to fall in one year in the U.S. is 739 inches, which was recorded in Kukui on the Hawaiian island of Kauai from December 1981 to December 1982.
Source: NOAA’s National Weather Service
Q: Did Obama accuse veterans of “selfishness” and whining? Would he have forced them to “pay for their war injuries”?
A: This chain e-mail contains fabricated quotes and misrepresents a budget idea that the White House scrapped. The quotes were intended as satire.
We had plenty to say recently about a misleading health care ad from a group called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights. We criticized the ad on its merits — but another organization has taken a different tack.
Health Care for America Now released this TV spot, titled "Shady," on May 7, attacking the character of the chairman of CPR, Rick Scott. The ad says that Scott’s former company (that’s Columbia/Hospital Corporation of America) "pleaded guilty to 14 felonies" in a Medicare fraud case that involved "overbilling"
On July 16, 1914, a U.S. record of 7 inches of rain in 30 minutes fell in Cambridge, Ohio.
Source: NOAA’s National Weather Service