Truthwatch

Promise Check: Obama's promises on health care put to challenge

UPDATED 7:30 AM EDT, March 28, 2013 | RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press

Health care was the defining political battle of President Barack Obama's first term, and — after the economy— it remains his most complicated policy challenge at home, central to his place in history.

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UPDATED 7:28 AM EDT, March 13, 2013

FACT CHECK: Gun debate deals in moldy stats

WASHINGTON (AP) — Some of the numbers being hurled around in the gun control debate passed their freshness date eons ago. Perhaps none is more prominent than the claim that 40 percent of gun sales take place without background checks.

The statistic is ubiquitous these days and cited as gospel by a variety of public figures and gun-control advocates, President Barack Obama among them, but it is 20 years old and was not much more than an educated guess at the time.

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UPDATED 23:35 PM EST, February 12, 2013

Stretching the State of the Union

In a State of the Union address heavy on economics and education, President Barack Obama and his Republican competition gave the country a healthy dose of selective math.

Take, for instance, Obama's boast about the state of job creation on his watch. "After years of grueling recession, our businesses have created over 6 million new jobs," the president declared Tuesday night.

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UPDATED 10:39 AM EST, February 6, 2013

Brennan, once stung by waterboarding, now opposes

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's pick for CIA director, John Brennan, withdrew from consideration for the job in 2008 amid criticism over the agency's use of harsh interrogation techniques like waterboarding against terrorist suspects. This time, he's making it clear he strongly opposes such practices.

Former and current U.S. intelligence officials say Brennan wasn't so vocal a decade ago.

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UPDATED 7:43 AM EST, November 27, 2012

Transparency Has Its Limits

President Barack Obama made a media splash four years ago when he became the first president to declare he would publicly release the names of people who came to visit the White House, whether for official business or pleasure.

But the recent scandal over ex-CIA Director David Petraeus’ extramarital affair has exposed the limitations of both the Obama White House’s promise and its practice.

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UPDATED 21:36 PM EDT, November 2, 2012

Sorting through a perfect storm of mangled facts

WASHINGTON (AP) — And now, to conclude, a few parting misstatements.

Come Wednesday, or sometime later if the election result is still in the balance, only one man will be left standing and the loser's inventory of misleading claims, out-of-context assertions and warped-reality advertising will fade into some inglorious corner of history. But we're not quite done with them yet.

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UPDATED 11:05 AM EDT, October 18, 2012

Rumbling past the facts

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the rough-and-tumble of a town hall-style presidential debate, the facts took something of a beating Tuesday night.

Mitt Romney wrongly claimed that it took 14 days for President Barack Obama to brand the assault on the U.S. Consulate in Libya a terrorist act. Obama yet again claimed that ending the Afghanistan and Iraq wars makes money available to "rebuild America," even though it doesn't.

A look at some of their claims:

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UPDATED 12:17 PM EDT, September 5, 2012

Embellishment and Omission

WASHINGTON (AP) — Speakers at the Democratic National Convention portrayed President Barack Obama's presidency in glowing terms Tuesday evening, but sometimes left out important details or embellished his record.

Others mischaracterized programs backed by Republican challenger Mitt Romney and GOP running mate Paul Ryan.

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UPDATED 7:47 AM EDT, July 27, 2012

Gun Treaty Truth

WASHINGTON (AP) — Negotiators at the United Nations are working to put final touches on a treaty cracking down on the global, $60 billion business of illicit trading in small arms, a move aimed at curbing violence in some of the most troubled corners of the world. In the United States, gun activists denounce it as an end run around their constitutional right to bear arms.

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