The rise of the dedicated “fact-check” organization in a time of contested facts could have been, in theory, a welcome addition to the political landscape, a way to impose order on chaos, to force a common set of facts onto the process. Unfortunately, all we have are Politifact and Glenn Kessler. Today, both of them [...]

Politifact won the “Pompous Response to Criticism of the Year” award yesterday for their rebuttal to criticism about their awarding of the Lie of the Year to the correct claim by Democrats that Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity budget would end Medicare. Dave Weigel has a pretty thorough rundown, so I won’t bother. The short [...]

You buy a hamburger from me and I give you a piece of hard black leather on a bun. You protest and I say, no, I’m still calling it a hamburger, so you got what you asked for. You start running around telling everyone I sell leather as hamburgers, and I get my local fact-checking [...]

Brian Beutler got to this today, but I noticed it last night and wanted to address it as well. Politifact is held up as a noble organization, dedicated to telling the truth about politics and the back-and-forth charges politicians make. But they seriously whiffed on this one. Discussing a DCCC ad, one I didn’t particularly [...]