Q: Do the poor drive farther than the rich, as McCain claims?
A: No. McCain is wrong when he claims repeatedly that low-income people drive more. In fact, the affluent drive twice as many miles.
Letter by a Florida Teacher
Q: Is a letter from an anonymous teacher about illegal immigrants getting school grants true?
A: No. It cobbles together misleading statements to give the impression that illegal immigrants are receiving perks from taxpayers, when, in fact, they are not.
Soft on Iran
Summary
John McCain is attacking Barack Obama’s opposition to the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which (among other things) called for labeling Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. McCain claims that Obama’s opposition means that he also opposed calling the IRGC terrorists. We find otherwise.
Obama cosponsored an earlier bill that also called for designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization.
The Kyl-Lieberman amendment did more than just label the IRGC terrorists. Obama stated at the time that he opposed the bill on the grounds that it constituted "saber-rattling."
Katrina Kerfuffle
Summary
McCain was asked by a New Orleans reporter why he voted twice against an independent commission to investigate the government’s failings before and after Hurricane Katrina, and he incorrectly stated that he had "voted for every investigation."
McCain actually voted twice, in 2005 and 2006, to defeat a Democratic amendment that would have set up an independent commission along the lines of the 9/11 Commission. At the time of the second vote,
Clinton and the Popular Vote
Q: Did Clinton win the popular vote?
A: Obama won more votes unless you count Michigan, where he wasn’t on the ballot.
Obama’s ‘Dreams of My Father’
Q: Did Obama write that he would "stand with the Muslims" and that he nurses a "pervasive sense of grievance and animosity" toward whites?
A: No. A widely circulated e-mail fabricates some quotes from Obama’s books and twists others.
Is Hamas Backing Obama for President?
Q: Did Hamas endorse Barack Obama?
A: A top adviser to the militant group has spoken favorably about Obama's candidacy.
Clinton Spins Her Donors
The debt-strapped Clinton campaign is appealing for money with an e-mail telling potential donors that polls “consistently” show she would beat McCain in November, and that she’s leading Obama in the popular vote. We find both claims are misleading. A number of recent polls actually show Clinton tied with McCain, or even trailing. For most of 2008, polls have shown McCain ahead.
Bill Clinton’s Road to the White House
Q: When did Bill Clinton clinch the Democratic nomination in 1992?
A: He had cleared the field of serious rivals by March.
Nonsense in New Mexico
Rep. Steve Pearce’s campaign and an independent anti-abortion group both have attacked Rep. Heather Wilson in the hotly contested race to be the Republican nominee for an open New Mexico Senate seat. But Pearce and the group run afoul of the facts. A mailer from Pearce claims that Wilson “voted for cloning that would create human embryos specifically to be destroyed for scientific research.” Actually, she voted to make it illegal to clone humans for reproductive purposes; the bill did not address embryos to be used for research, as anti-abortion groups wanted. It’s simply false to say she voted for som