It's a presidential election year, which means the various "fact check" groups will be ramping into overdrive. But most of these groups are just liberal journalists spreading their propaganda under the auspices of "fact checking."
Take, for example,
PolitiFact's recent assessment of this gun control howler from Barack Obama:
A violent felon can buy (a gun) over the Internet with no background check, no questions asked.
Of course, this isn't remotely true - a violent felon can't
legally buy a gun, over the internet or otherwise. But PolitiFact rated the remark as "Mostly True" based on the following rationale:
Quite a few readers flagged Obama’s claim that a violent felon can buy a gun online without a background check, so we decided to fact-check it.
Some readers seemed to think Obama was suggesting such transactions were legal. We don’t see that in Obama’s comments. (The grammarians at PolitiFact would note that Obama said "can," not "may.") To be clear, such a transaction would be illegal. What Obama said is that such transactions are possible. That is accurate, but it’s also a little more complicated than Obama’s comment suggests.
Everybody get that? Because Obama said "can" instead of "may," he was obviously talking about how felons can break the law in purchasing over the internet.
But if you adopt PolitiFact's interpretation - that Obama was simply referring to felons breaking the law - then his comment is completely irrelevant. Of course a felon "can" violate existing law, the same way the felon "can" violate any new rules imposed under Obama's new
law executive action. He'll simply use a straw purchaser, or find an illegal seller. So to get to "mostly true," PolitiFact chose to interpret Obama's remark in a way that makes it completely irrelevant.
Now try to imagine PolitiFact engaging in such Orwellian drivel in support of a Republican claim.
