Bachmann said Obama voted against the debt limit when he was a senator (Politifact.com)

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By Politifact.com Staff

Michele Bachmann said she would not support increasing the debt ceiling if it didn't include major reductions in government spending.

"I've already voted no on raising the debt ceiling in the past. And unless there are serious cuts, I can't," she said at debate June 13, 2011, in New Hampshire. Bachmann is seeking the 2012 Republican nomination for president.

"But I want to speak to someone that's far more eloquent than I," she continued. "Someone who said just dealing with the issue of raising the debt ceiling is a failure of leadership. That person was then Senator Barack Obama. He refused to raise the debt ceiling because he said President Bush had failed in leadership."

We decided to fact-check Bachmann's to see if she was right. 


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Facts, schmacts? Not while Politifact and This Week's Jake Tapper are watching! (Mr. Media)

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By BOB ANDELMAN

If you’re going to get called on the carpet for something you did right, might as well be by Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central’s whirlwind of truthiness, “The Colbert Report.”

That’s what happened about a week ago to Bill Adair, Pulitzer Prize winning editor of Politifact.com, the online fact-checking operation spawned by the St. Petersburg Times.

In case you missed this story, Jake Tapper, interim host of ABC’s Sunday morning political chat fest, “This Week,” announced his guests’ most questionable claims would be subject to fact checking by Politifact.

Meanwhile, over at NBC’s venerable “Meet The Press,” host David Gregory dismissed the need for fact-checking his guests. I understand his point; does anyone fact-check the wrestlers’ claims on "WWE Smackdown"? Of course not. It’s pure, scripted entertainment. Not something anyone takes seriously.

Colbert even invited Tapper and Adair on his show to discuss their work.

Politifact uses a series of truth-o-meters to declare politicians’ boldest statements either true, untrue, half-true or “pants-on-fire” lies. It won a Pulitzer Prize for its work in 2009, which was the first time Bill Adair was on Mr. Media. Now that he’s been discovered by Colbert, he’s a tougher guest to book, but we’re always delighted to have him.

BILL ADAIR AUDIO EXCERPT: "The result is some good fact checking that wouldn't have been done before." 

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You can LISTEN to this interview with BILL ADAIR, editor of POLITIFACT.com, by clicking the audio player above!

Copyright 2010 Bob Andelman. Click here for copyright permissions!

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Bill Adair, POLITIFACT.com, ST. PETERSBURG TIMES editor: Mr. Media Audio Interview

Image of Bill AdairIf you wanted to pick a good presidential campaign upon which to launch a political web site devoted to truth, justice, and the American Way – and those are my words, not theirs – this would be the one.

You’ve got a man running as the candidate of one party who was in Vietnamese prisoner of war camps for five years, plus the first woman and African-American man to ever challenge for a major party’s nomination – and one of them will win it, one of these days.

And before we reached this point, there were so many candidates on both sides that we needed scorecards to keep track.

If you haven’t visited it before, take a minute and surf over to www.PolitiFact.com while you listen to this podcast.

The site is an online extension of the St. Petersburg Times daily newspaper and Congressional Quarterly and it is just what an election of this magnitude and complexity needs: a lie detector!

Literally!

Joining me today is the editor of Politifact.com – and Washington bureau chief for the St. Petersburg Times – Bill Adair. (And in the interest of full disclosure, let me say that my wife is a long-time editor at the Times.)
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