Oh! God help the youth of this country. Your the teacher I told my kids to stear clear of when they went off to college.
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The Whoppers of 2008—The Sequel
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Order in the Court, Please
Yes, ads in some state Supreme Court races have acquired the tone of some of the nastiest ads in the rest of the political realm. We found some attacks that didn't hold up in Alabama, where two candidates are vying for an open seat on the bench.
One was in the form of a robo-call. It's unclear who's responsible for the effort, but the caller imparts false information when he says that Democrat Deborah Bell Paseur received a rating of "F" from the Alabama State Bar. It turns out that the bar doesn't rate judicial candidates. For her part, Paseur said in an ad that her opponent, Greg Shaw, was "backed by more than a million dollars tied to gas and oil lobbyists" from a certain building "near Washington, D.C." It may be true that the group that occupies the building, the Center for Individual Rights, has spent that much buying ads in support of Shaw. But Paseur can't prove that all that money is connected to oil and gas lobbyists: the group doesn't release the names of its contributors, and at any rate is involved in many issues, not just energy.
For our write-ups on even more viciously false ads in a Supreme Court campaign this year, see articles we wrote back in March about a race in Wisconsin.
Court Fight in the Heart of Dixie October 23
And There's More...
Too many to mention, really, but here's a sampling of the other distortions and falsehoods we've run into in the closing weeks:
* The National Rifle Association opened fire on Obama with ads claiming he voted to ban deer-hunting ammunition (not true) and voted to "make you the criminal" for using a handgun in self-defense (a serious distortion of a vote to uphold enforcement of local gun bans in Illinois).
NRA Targets Obama September 22
The Rifle Association's 'True Story' October 23
* The liberal group VoteVets.org became the first to make two of our "Whoppers" lists (2006 and 2008) with the same false ad. It recycled its baseless claim that Republican senators – in this case, North Carolina's Elizabeth Dole – voted to deny body armor to U.S. troops in Iraq.
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