More Lies, er, Errors

At yesterday’s debate, VP Dick Cheney said to Sen. John Edwards, “Your hometown newspaper has taken to calling you ‘Senator Gone’.”

Um, turns out that’s — shockingly — not true.

The newspaper to which Mr. Cheney was referring was The Pilot, which had this to say in its editorial today:

The Pilot hasn’t “taken to calling him” anything. In fact, the vice president’s obscure reference sent us scrambling to our library. And sure enough, we did publish an editorial 15 months ago, on June 25, 2003, headlined, “Edwards Should Do His Day Job.” In it, we noted that Sen. Jesse Helms used to be called “Senator No.” And we added: “Four and a half years into his first term, John Edwards is becoming known as Senator Gone.”

[snip]

But we also wrote: “Members of the senator’s staff point out that Edwards’ attendance record this year has been better than the three other Democratic senators who are campaigning for president � Joe Lieberman, Richard Gephardt and Bob Graham. And the aides also say none of the votes Edwards missed was close, so his presence on the floor would not have changed the outcome.”

I think Cheney needs to learn that just saying something with conviction doesn’t make it true, and that these days there are a lot of people out there willing to fact-check you.

Speaking of “fact check,” by now most people have discovered that the site Cheney suggested people visit — factcheck.com — is not what he meant (it in fact links to an George Soros’s anti-Bush message). He meant factcheck.org.

BUT…

I’m sure there are some folks who will take what Cheney said as the truth — that is, that there must be something damning on the factcheck.org site. Or at least something that refutes what Edwards said.

Turns out that’s not so.

It all started when Edwards said that Halliburton “paid millions of dollars in fines for providing false information on their company, just like Enron and Ken Lay” and “Not only that, they�ve gotten a $7.5 billion no-bid contract in Iraq, and instead of part of their money being withheld, which is the way it�s normally done, because they�re under investigation, they�ve continued to get their money.”

Cheney replied that people should go to the factcheck site.

But the folks at FactCheck.org said that Cheney was, well, wrong. Again. They wrote:

Cheney got our domain name wrong — calling us “FactCheck.com” — and wrongly implied that we had rebutted allegations Edwards was making about what Cheney had done as chief executive officer of Halliburton.

In fact, we did post an article pointing out that Cheney hasn’t profited personally while in office from Halliburton’s Iraq contracts, as falsely implied by a Kerry TV ad. But Edwards was talking about Cheney’s responsibility for earlier Halliburton troubles. And in fact, Edwards was mostly right.

Some sites are starting to imply that Cheney is, in fact, a pathological liar.