Archive for the 'Barack Obama' Category

More Citizenship Quibbles

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

Since our article about Barack Obama’s birth certificate came out in August, we’ve heard many frivolous claims, nutty theories and made-up facts advanced by a small clique of Obama deniers. It seems that every time a rumor is debunked, a new one crops up to take its place. Sometimes contradictory rumors even circulate simultaneously.
The [...]

Ride into the Danger Zone

Thursday, February 26th, 2009

The Air Force’s much-criticized F-22 has been a favorite subject of much of the blogosphere, particularly since Mark Bowden’s feature article praising the fighter appeared in the March issue of The Atlantic . Tuesday night the discussion went mainstream, with Obama’s oblique reference to “Cold War weapons we don’t use.” As we said in our [...]

The $79 Billion Iraqi Surplus, Re-reconsidered

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

During the 2008 campaign, we repeatedly called out then-candidate Barack Obama for complaining that the U.S. was spending billions in Iraq while the Iraqi government sat on a projected $79 billion surplus. We said that Obama’s projection didn’t account for updates to the Iraqi budget. But things were slightly more complicated than we originally thought: [...]

Obama’s Inaugural Bobble

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

President Barack Obama made one factual error in his first speech in office when he said, immediately after being sworn in:
Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.
It is true that Obama is counted as the 44th president, but he’s only the 43rd person to take the oath. Grover Cleveland is counted as both the [...]

You Ask, We Answer

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

That’s the idea behind our Ask FactCheck feature on the main site.
This week, we looked into a suspicious quote allegedly from President-elect Barack Obama, speaking about urgent gun policy changes. The reader who sent it to us wasn’t convinced it was legitimate, and our reporting showed it was almost certainly a fabrication. The quote claims [...]