Obama Uses Own Money to Open Muslim Museum Amid Government Shutdown
Claim:  President Obama is using his personal funds to keep the International Museum of Muslim Cultures open during the government shutdown.  Example:  [Collected via e-mail, September 2013] I recently read an article online stating that president Obama is using his personal funds to keep the international museum of Muslim culture open during the government shutdown. I was wondering if your site had any information regarding this.   Origins:  On 2 October 2013,  the National Report published an article positing that President Obama would be using his personal funds to keep the International Museum of Muslim Cultures open during the current government budget shutdown: article While up to 800,000 federal workers faced life without a paycheck as Day One of the government shutdown kicked in, President Barack Obama held a press conference to announce  that he is using his own money to open the federally funded International Museum of Muslim Cultures. "During this shutdown, people will have to deal with some of their favorite parks and museums being closed," Obama told reporters. "Just keep in mind, they will always be there. The Grand Canyon and the Smithsonian are not going anywhere." Obama continued, "The International Museum of Muslim Cultures is sacred. That is why I have taken it upon myself to use my own personal funds to re-open this historic piece of American culture." The International Museum of Muslim Cultures closed its doors as parts of the federal government shut down after Congress failed to reach an agreement on spending. The fiscal standoff stems in large part from Republican attempts to block President Obama's healthcare initiative. By the following day links and excerpts referencing this article were being circulated via social media, with many of those who encountered the item mistaking it for a genuine news article.  However, the article was just a bit of satire from the National Report,  a web site that publishes outrageous fictional stories such as "IRS Plans to Target Leprechauns Next," "Boy Scouts Announce Boobs Merit Badge," and "New CDC Study Indicates Pets of Gay Couples Worse at Sports, Better at Fashion Than Pets of Straight Couples." The National Report's (since removed) disclaimer page notes that: disclaimer National Report is a news and political satire web publication, which may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious ways.  All news articles contained within National Report are fiction, and presumably fake news.  Any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental. Nonetheless, Fox News host Anna Kooiman fell for this spoof during a Fox & Friends segment, reporting that "[W]e're going to talk a little bit later in the show  about some things that are continuing to be funded. And President Obama has offered to pay out of his own pocket for the museum of Muslim culture ...":  (For the record, we note that there is indeed an International Museum of Muslim Cultures in Jackson, Mississippi, but it is an independent museum and not a federally funded one.) International Museum of Muslim Cultures Last updated:  5 October 2013
During ongoing national debate over a novel policy of separating families at the border, a photograph circulated (originally from Joshua Feuerstein, a self-styled "American evangelist, Internet and social media personality" who last made headlines in 2015 when he manufactured a so-called "Christmas cup controversy") that purportedly depicted a room full of immigrant children that former President Barack Obama had supposedly removed from their parents' custody: novel policy a photograph circulated self-styled Christmas cup controversy immigrant children The attached text read:As you stare at this picture of innocent children being separated from their parents at the border and feel your hatred toward President Trump start to boil over from the bowels of your soul...I'd just like to point out it was taken in 2014 .. when Obama was President! #shareSome versions were shared with no accompanying text, inviting readers to project their own interpretation onto the image:Images of its type (dated to the Obama administration) were often described as having been ignored at the time they were originally taken. However, this image did appear in anti-immigration memes from 2014 and 2015, such as one framing the photograph as evidence the Obama administration (described here as a "cabal") was encouraging ("seducing") immigrant ("illegal alien") children to come to the United States:The meme's text read:INSIDE AN OBAMA APPROVED REFUGEE CAMP140,000 Illegal Alien Children Seduced into coming to America By the Obama Cabal. MORE COMING NEXT YEAR TOOHey Obama.. Why not use the FEMA CAMPS??Or are those being prepped for Patriot Resistance Fighters!!The first iteration we could find of that image was alongside a 5 June 2014 post published by Breitbart. Although Breitbart shared the photograph on Facebook on 21 June 2018, the outlet did not include a link to its earlier reporting. In its original article, the children were described as "unaccompanied," indicating that they came without their parents, not that they were separated from their families by American authorities:Breitbart Texas obtained internal federal government photos depicting the conditions of foreign children warehoused by authorities on U.S. soil on Wednesday night. Thousands of illegal immigrants have overrun U.S. border security and their processing centers in Texas along the U.S./Mexico border. Unaccompanied minors, including young girls under the age of 12, are making the dangerous journey from Central America and Mexico, through cartel-controlled territories, and across the porous border onto U.S. soil.The photograph was subsequently disseminated by numerous web sites and news outlets. National Review's "Immigration Bedlam" said of the children in the photo:Some 6,775 unaccompanied alien children (UAC) crossed the U.S.Mexican border in 2011, the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement reports. (The first bar in the ORRs chart, above, should read 20032011.) ORR expects 60,000 UACs this year. This number could reach 130,000 in 2015. Detaining them for $252 each, per day, will cost taxpayers $453.6 million per month this year and could cost $982.8 million per month next year.The image and events around it were widely reported for several months, appearing in the Houston Chronicle, Splinter News, the Los Angeles Times, Mashable, and Reuters, among others.Stories during that time specifically reiterated that the photographs showed unaccompanied minor children in the custody of United States Customs and Border Protection and temporarily housed at a Texas Air Force base:The photos have a timestamp of May 27, 2014.A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the agency has not officially released any photos at this time in order to protect the rights and privacy of unaccompanied minors in our care.... A temporary shelter at Joint Base San Antonio Lackland has housed and provided services to 1,820 unaccompanied minors from Central America since May 18, San Antonio Express-News reporter Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje reported. The immigration is part of a surge of children said to be fleeing poverty and violence in their home countries, she reported.Although the photograph is real, it does not show children separated from their parents by the Obama administration. In June 2014, the image was published as part of numerous news stories (and occasionally alongside editorial pieces objecting to the presence of the unaccompanied minor children.) The image did not develop a different backstory until June 2018, during a controversy that specifically involved family separation at the behest of the Trump administration.  The attached text read: As you stare at this picture of innocent children being separated from their parents at the border and feel your hatred toward President Trump start to boil over from the bowels of your soul...I'd just like to point out it was taken in 2014 .. when Obama was President! #share Some versions were shared with no accompanying text, inviting readers to project their own interpretation onto the image: Images of its type (dated to the Obama administration) were often described as having been ignored at the time they were originally taken. However, this image did appear in anti-immigration memes from 2014 and 2015, such as one framing the photograph as evidence the Obama administration (described here as a "cabal") was encouraging ("seducing") immigrant ("illegal alien") children to come to the United States: described   The meme's text read: INSIDE AN OBAMA APPROVED REFUGEE CAMP 140,000 Illegal Alien Children Seduced into coming to America By the Obama Cabal. MORE COMING NEXT YEAR TOO Hey Obama.. Why not use the FEMA CAMPS??Or are those being prepped for Patriot Resistance Fighters!! The first iteration we could find of that image was alongside a 5 June 2014 post published by Breitbart. Although Breitbart shared the photograph on Facebook on 21 June 2018, the outlet did not include a link to its earlier reporting. In its original article, the children were described as "unaccompanied," indicating that they came without their parents, not that they were separated from their families by American authorities: published Breitbart Breitbart unaccompanied Breitbart Texas obtained internal federal government photos depicting the conditions of foreign children warehoused by authorities on U.S. soil on Wednesday night. Thousands of illegal immigrants have overrun U.S. border security and their processing centers in Texas along the U.S./Mexico border. Unaccompanied minors, including young girls under the age of 12, are making the dangerous journey from Central America and Mexico, through cartel-controlled territories, and across the porous border onto U.S. soil. The photograph was subsequently disseminated by numerous web sites and news outlets. National Review's "Immigration Bedlam" said of the children in the photo: National Review Immigration Bedlam Some 6,775 unaccompanied alien children (UAC) crossed the U.S.Mexican border in 2011, the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement reports. (The first bar in the ORRs chart, above, should read 20032011.) ORR expects 60,000 UACs this year. This number could reach 130,000 in 2015. Detaining them for $252 each, per day, will cost taxpayers $453.6 million per month this year and could cost $982.8 million per month next year. The image and events around it were widely reported for several months, appearing in the Houston Chronicle, Splinter News, the Los Angeles Times, Mashable, and Reuters, among others. widely reported Houston Chronicle Splinter News Los Angeles Times Mashable Reuters Stories during that time specifically reiterated that the photographs showed unaccompanied minor children in the custody of United States Customs and Border Protection and temporarily housed at a Texas Air Force base: The photos have a timestamp of May 27, 2014. A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the agency has not officially released any photos at this time in order to protect the rights and privacy of unaccompanied minors in our care. ... A temporary shelter at Joint Base San Antonio Lackland has housed and provided services to 1,820 unaccompanied minors from Central America since May 18, San Antonio Express-News reporter Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje reported. The immigration is part of a surge of children said to be fleeing poverty and violence in their home countries, she reported. Although the photograph is real, it does not show children separated from their parents by the Obama administration. In June 2014, the image was published as part of numerous news stories (and occasionally alongside editorial pieces objecting to the presence of the unaccompanied minor children.) The image did not develop a different backstory until June 2018, during a controversy that specifically involved family separation at the behest of the Trump administration. family separation DeRuy, Emily and Jorge Rivas.  "Disturbing Photos Allegedly Show Texas Border Patrol Facility Packed With Immigrant Children."
  Splinter.  6 June 2014. Darby, Brandon.  "Leaked Images Reveal Children Warehoused In Crowded U.S. Cells, Border Patrol Overwhelmed."
  Breitbart.  5 June 2014. Hennessy-Fiske, Molly.  "Hundreds Of Migrant Youths Held At Texas Military Base."
  Los Angeles Times.  5 June 2014. Murdock, Deroy.  "Immigration Bedlam."
  National Review.   13 June 2014. Parker, Kolten.  "Leaked Photos Show Immigrant Children Packed In Crowded Texas Border Facilities."
  Houston Chronicle.  6 June 2014. Roug, Louise.  "How The U.S. Border Became A Humanitarian Crisis."
  Mashable.  8 July 2014. Reuters.  "U.S. To Open Third Military Base To Illegal Child Immigrants."
  9 June 2014 In September 2016, Facebook pages (including "Mobile Trend" and "Lady Trend") purportedly kicked off tiny house giveaway contests: Mobile Trend Lady Trend     As with all like-farming Facebook scams, the purported tiny house contests adhered to a simple format: users were instructed to like a separate page, like the original post, and share the post on their own Facebook timelines (thereby validating its legitimacy and enticing others to do the same). Although the tiny houses purportedly up for grabs appeared visually different in various posts, the instructions for "winning" them were virtually identical. The first clue these tiny house giveaways were not legitimate were the images of the homes used in the Facebook posts. The red "tiny house" was a Getty stock photo commonly pinned to Pinterest (and unlikely to be a contest prize), and the second was likewise a stock photograph of a tiny house:      Moreover, neither page was linked with any major home improvement company or other commercial entity (e.g., Home Depot, HGTV, or a real estate firm) one might imagine would offer up a free tiny house in exchange for social media advertising. Were any legitimate company to engage in such a giveaway, their incentive would be exposure, yet no attendant promotional return on advertising investment was evident in these Facebook giveaway claims. The manner in which users were lured was similar to scams involving Costco, Kroger and Amazon gift cards, but the six-figure jackpot attached to some of the tiny house scams proved a far more difficult-to-resist enticement for some users, advancing the hoax more quickly than those which linked out to sketchy signup pages. The contests bore all the hallmarks of standard "like farming" gambits, intended to quickly build and sell popular Facebook pages to the highest bidder. Costco Kroger Amazon like farming Even if the page creators intended only to build an audience, participation in the scam created an environment amenable to scammers of the same ilk seeking to exploit users' desires and needs to pump and dump a relatively new Facebook page. A large audience could also be exploited by scammers' mining varying levels of personal data from those who have liked pages of dubious origin. Facebook users enmired in like and share fake giveaways not only unwittingly help spammers litter the social network with scams, they may also risk being exposed to malware, clickjacking, or other unpleasantries (such as finding their names and identities endorsing a scam, hate page, or other undesirable activity). Legitimate product giveaways, particularly of high-value merchandise, are exceptionally rare and are almost always conducted through the official channels of major brands and related large companies. Scam:  Advertisers offer kits that enable home workers to make money posting links on the Internet. Example:   If you live in Canada or the US and you have been wanting to work from home, you might be in luck. Google has now released a new 'Work From Home Program' that will allow Americans to work for the titan from the comfort of their own homes. To thousands of North Americans this means that they will soon have a safe and bright future working for one of the fastest growing companies in the world. In the middle of this recession this country and the world is going through, Google has been thriving and reporting profits consistently every quarter.  Completely innovating the Search Engine industry in the late 1990's, Google has had a history of development and innovation, and another one is about to come.  Google has now opened it's doors and will be hiring everyday people to work from the comfort of their own homes posting links. The way this works is Google will allow people to signup and receive a package which will contain all the step by step instructions to get setup from home. This will allow Google to hire talent in places like Canada that would otherwise be unreachable and compensate them based on results on a long term basis. What you need: A Computer, an Internet Connection and the desire to make a living working from home. No special skills are required other than knowing how to use a computer and navigate the internet.  Mary, a mother from Toronto, who worked with Google in the experimental parts of this program, is thriving, in the middle of an economic recession, working in the comfort of her own home with Google. From her website: 'I get paid about $25 USD for every link I post on Google and I get paid every week... I make around $5500 USD a month right now' Google has now officially released their new 'work from home' system out to the public. There will be thousand of spots available that are expected to go very soon in the next few days.  The way this works is very simple, Google says.  First you will need to apply for their work from home kits. Google has release a limited amount of kits, all distributed through local websites in your area throughout US and Canada, which will cost $2 of shipping and handling to the public.  Google says this charge is made to cover shipping costs but also to separate the people that are serious about working with them through this program.  Once you have ordered your kit (if you are one of the lucky few to get availability in your area) then you will receive a package that will contain all the instructions you need to start working from home for the online titan. This kit will show you all you need to know, Google says. You will be performing simple and straightforward tasks such as posting links. 'Anybody with basic computer skills will be able to perform these tasks' adding to that they say that 'We understand the psychology of working from home and we want to give our employees tasks that are simple and easy, and reward them generously in order to keep them motivated.' Is this worth quitting your job? If you're lucky enough to receive a kit, you might not even have to.  'We start off our work from home program only requiring 1-2 hours a day of work, earning a great income from the start. This way our work from home employees will see the benefit and start devoting more and more time each day and their salaries will increase accordingly' Google reports. Although they are going very fast since their release earlier today, thousands of positions are still available at the time of this writing.  To apply for a job working from home for Google here are the three steps: Step 1: Get the Google Work From Home Kit, only pay the $2.95 for shipping. (The shipping cost allows Google to screen for serious people).  Step 2: Follow the directions on your package and set up a Google account. Then they will give you the website links to post. Start posting those links. Google tracks everything. Step 3: Google will send out your checks weekly. Or you can start to have them wire directly into your checking account. (Your first checks will be about $750 to $1,500 a week. Then it goes up from there. Depends on how many links you posted online.) Variations:  In December 2009 we began encountering a Yahoo version of the scam, which was the same as the Google scam discussed below, just with Yahoo's name inserted in place of Google's. Origins:  Those searching for employment opportunities that will allow them to work from home are all too often the very people who can least afford to be defrauded. Although many folks daydream about earning livable incomes from the comfort of their dens rather than having to make the trek to their offices each day, they do not as a general rule of thumb search for such job openings with the same fervor as do the elderly, the physically challenged, or parents committed to remaining at home with their preschool children. Members of those groups hunt for work-at-home opportunities because laboring in more traditional job settings is impossible for them. Because genuine offers of work of this nature are few and far between, with the need to secure a steady income becoming more of a pressing issue with each passing non-employed day, those folks are at far greater risk of being victimized by such schemes; their desperation leads them to be gulled by pie-in-the-sky promises and mollified by the wild backstories that go with them, while the financially better off  are more likely to remain convinced something is very wrong with the offer of mucho bucks in exchange for only a few hours'labor performed from home each week by persons possessed of no special training or skills. From 2009 onwards, a proliferation of seeming newspaper articles touting "Google Job Opportunities," "Google Money Master," "Easy Google Profit," "Google Cash Kit," "Google Fortune Kit," "Home Cash System," "Six Figure Program" and the like began popping up on the Internet. Such come-ons are typically emblazoned with "As seen on" taglines followed by an impressive array of logos, including those of ABC, AOL, CNN, MSNBC, and USA Today.Often these come-ons include what appear to be tearsheets from legitimate-looking publications, such as the New York Tribune and Los Angeles Tribune. As for the publications supposedly reporting these stories, while there was a New York Tribune long ago, in 1924 it merged with the New York Herald to form the New York Herald Tribune. (Even that newspaper is no longer around; it went out of business in 1967.) As for the ostensible Los Angeles Tribune, that paper is wholly fictional; it existed only in the television show Lou Grant. Web pages purporting to be personal reports of riches reaped through these programs have also popped up, such as the now defunctBryansMoneyBlog.com. They too were the same sort of come-on. While the promise of vast riches to be gained through working from home is held out to those seeking an answer to their financial problems, that promise is but the worm used to entice the fish into biting down on the hook. Those who sign up for such kits will not soon find themselves on Easy Street; instead, they will find their bank accounts tapped to the tune of approximately $80 a month. While prospective job seekers are told they need to pay a $2 charge for kits that supposedly contain the step-by-step instructions on how to begin working from home (often explained as Google's way of sifting the serious from non-serious candidates), a closer examination of the Terms and Conditions associated with the programs applicants are signing up for reveals they are instead authorizing monthly charges either to their bank accounts or credit cards, usually to the tune of about $80 a month. Those who attempt to cancel these charges find the task a difficult one, in that only rarely does anyone at the phone number supplied for that purpose actually come onto that line. Those still not convinced they haven't just found the answer to their prayers are invited to closely examine the various web page come-ons. Usually, buried at the bottom of the page in fine print is a statement to the effect that "Google is in no way associated with this website." Barbara "web slight of hand" Mikkelson How to Avoid Falling Victim to 'Work From Home' Scams: Don't pay a company to hire you, not even if such payment is presented as your buying necessary training materials, obtaining required certification, or registering with databases of available workers. Remember, if the process involves your sending your "employers" money, it's probably a scam.  If you have questions about the legitimacy of a job listing, contact your Better Business Bureau, your state or local consumer agency, or the Federal Trade Commission.   Examine your credit card and bank account statements every month, keeping an eye peeled for unauthorized charges. Immediately challenge items you did not approve. Additional information:        Suspicious sites and what to look for   (Google)        How to steer clear of money scams   (Official Google blog)   Last updated:  15 December 2009    Sources:   Buck, Claudia.  "Employment Work-at-Home Deals Often Are Just Scams."   The Houston Chronicle.  30 March 2009  (p. B8).     Turner, Tracy.  "Scammers Tweeting Their Way to Easy Prey."   The Columbus Dispatch.  12 July 2009  (p. D1).     Weeks, Carly.  "As the Economy Tanks, Scams Thrive."   The Globe and Mail.  9 March 2009  (p. L1). Since the 2020 elections, Fox News host Tucker Carlson has attackedU.S. President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, for allegedly engaging in business practices by means of which Hunter allegedly benefited from his father's position. But just a few years ago, according to an internet rumor, Carlson was asking for the younger Biden's help in getting his son into college. attacked A meme going around claims that an email shows Carlson thanking Biden for writing a letter to Georgetown University on behalf of his son, Buckley.  This claim is accurate. In 2014, when Joe Biden was serving as vice president, Carlson and his wife, Susie,reached out to Hunter Biden for help in getting their son into Georgetown University. Their email communication was revealed through forensic analysis of a laptop once owned by Biden that he had purportedly left at a Delaware computer repair shop in 2019. The laptop was obtained by Trump's then-lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and its contents pushed out to the New York Post in 2020. The correspondenceon Biden's hard drive, a copy of which was also in the possession of the FBI, was largely used to investigate his overseas business dealings during his father's time in the White House, but also have illuminated more about the Carlson-Biden relationship. reached out revealed laptop once owned by Biden correspondence The emails were given to The Washington Poston a hard drive by activist Jack Maxey, who received it from Giuliani. The Washington Post revealed the details of Carlson's and Biden's communication in May 2022, and was able to confirm with the help of forensic analysis and interviews with people familiar with the communications that this and other emails on the hard drive were real. The Washington Post So what did Carlson actually say? The Post shared an image of a few of the emails in which he thanks Biden for writing a letter to Georgetown "on Buckley's [his son's] behalf." He added, "So nice of you. I know it'll help." The Post Image via Washington Post Carlson's wife wrote to Biden in 2014: "I realize you don't really know Buckley. Maybe you could meet or speak to him and he could send you a very brief resume with his interests and grades attached." She also wrote: "Tucker and I would be so grateful if you could write a letter or speak to someone in the Georgetown Admission's Office about Buckley." Biden wrote back that he would be honored to help. "I will do anything you would like me to do," he said. Carlson described his son's interest in squash and fly fishing and wrote, "He loves Washington for all the right reasons, I think, and really wants to go to school here." When Biden agreed to write a letter for Buckley, Susie responded with, "Tucker and I have the greatest respect and admiration for you. Always!" Carlson admitted that he was once close with Biden in a phone interview with the Post. He said: "Hunter Biden was my neighbor. Our wives were friends. I knew him well. I talked to him many times about addiction, something I know a lot about. And I've said that. I think that Hunter Biden is an addict and that's why his life is falling apart, and I feel bad for him. I've said that many times, and I mean it." admitted He refused to discuss the emails, however, pointing (with apparent irony) to claims that the timing of the laptop's emergence in 2020 had the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. Previously, Carlson had dismissed and mocked claims of a Russian disinformation campaign as an effort by the establishment and tech giants to protect Joe Biden's 2020 election campaign. It is unclear if Biden ended up writing a letter, but Carlson's son did end up going to the University of Virginia. refused "I can't confirm these emails. The emails that you're referring to were described by our intel community as Russian disinformation," he said. He added that he could not verify the emails as he did not have access to the account. said Hunter Biden declined to comment to the Post. Since 2020, Carlson has regularly skewered the younger Biden on his show, accusing him of getting "lucrative jobs  because he had an important father." skewered He did say there were certain lines he would not cross, pertaining to the laptop. In October 2020, he said: "Much of the material on the laptop is of limited relevance to the public. [...] And by the way, if we're being honest, some of the exchanges between Hunter Biden and his father, and they are on there, too, reveal that whatever you say about them, Joe Biden really loves his son, and they're touching." But following the 2020 election, Carlson's anti-Hunter Biden rhetoric grew, and he even poked fun at his addictions in an October 2021 segment:"So again, let's say you were a crackhead through your 40s, made a lot of pornographic videos mostly of yourself, your genitals covered in M&Ms, and then once you got to your 50s, decide, 'Hey, I want to be Andy Warhol. You probably couldn't do it unless your dad happened to be the president, and that's how Hunter Biden pulled that off." grew "A Look at the Time Tucker Carlson Asked Hunter Biden for a Favor." Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/19/look-time-tucker-carlson-asked-hunter-biden-favor/. Accessed 7 Dec. 2022. Pengelly, Martin. "Tucker Carlson Tried to Use Hunter Biden to Get His Son into Georgetown." The Guardian, 20 May 2022. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/19/tucker-carlson-hunter-biden-georgetown-emails.Accessed 7 Dec. 2022. Claim:  Letters written by Alaskans offer viewpoints of Alaska governor and vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Status:  Multiple  see below. Origins:  In the immediate aftermath of the selection of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee came a deluge of Internet-circulated open letters about her, each written by someone claiming a direct or indirect connection to the candidate (e.g., knowing her personally; having lived in the town of Wasilla, Alaska, where Palin served as mayor; or having been a long-time resident of Alaska), and each seemingly attempting to outdo its predecessors in terms of effusive praise or condemnatory criticism of her politics. The letter which was by far the most widely circulated (and which drew the most media attention) was a critical 31 August 2008 missive attributed to a Wasilla resident named Anne Kilkenny, who said she had known Sarah Palin since 1992: ABOUT SARAH PALIN I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child's favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during her administration than about 99% of theresidents of the city. She is enormously popular; in every way shes like the most popular girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice and won't vote for her can't quit  smiling when talking about her because she is a "babe". It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret. She kept her most recent pregnancy a secret from her children and parents for seven months. She is "pro-life". She recently gave birth to a Down's syndrome baby. There is no cover-up involved, here; Trig is her baby. She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym. She is savvy. She doesn't take positions; she just "puts things out there" and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit. Her husband works a union job on the North Slope for BP and is a champion snowmobile racer. Todd Palin's kind of job is highly sought-after because of the schedule and high pay. He arranges his work schedule so he can fish for salmon in Bristol Bay for a month or so in summer, but by no stretch of the imagination is fishing their major source of income. Nor has her life-style ever been anything like that of native Alaskans. [Remainder of letter here.] here This letter was indeed written, as claimed, by Wasilla resident Anne Kilkenny, who explained her motivations for drafting it to a Daily Journal reporter: Recently, we received a note about the Web post, "Letter from Anne Kilkenny," about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee. We thought for sure it was not really, "a resident of Wasilla, Alaska" who has known Palin since 1992 as the post claims. So, we checked it out. Kilkenny does exist, and she does live in Alaska. We reached her by phone and asked if she wrote the rather long note that calls Palin "smart" but also questions her abilities. We asked Kilkenny, "Did you write that letter?" She replied skeptically, "Well, I don't know. Read me parts of it. I'll tell you if it's mine or not." After we read it to her, she said, "Yes, I wrote that." She sent it out to 40 people, brothers, sisters and friends, on Sunday  two days after U.S. Sen. John McCain announced Palin as his choice. On Wednesday, if you enter Kilkenny and Palin's names on Google, about 200 sites refer to this letter. Why did she do it? Kilkenny told The Daily Journal she wanted to offer people information and her experiences. She does not flatter Palin, but she said she did vote for Palin when she ran for city council. "How affirming it has been," she said. "I am pleased to know how idealistic Americans are. They want information not just the politics of destruction." Another popular entry was this 28 August 2008 letter by Wasilla resident Debbie Frost, which cast the Alaska governor as the "US's answer to [British prime minister] Margaret Thatcher": Sarah Palin is the US's answer to Margaret Thatcher! Anyone who thinks she cannot handle the job or deal briskly and efficiently with ANY issue, including foreign governments ... well, they haven't met our Sarah. As an Alaskan resident as well as a resident of Wasilla, AK, where Sarah Palin was at one time Mayor ... I can speak with confidence. Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska is exactly what she portrayed during her introduction this morning and exactly what our US Government needs. She is ethical to a fault (if there is such a thing), a refreshing change to the status-quo and as smart and determined a PERSON (gender really isn't an issue here as far as I'm concerned) as anyone could ask for at the head of government.  Sarah is no naive 'small town mayor'  she just *started out* there. BTW, as Mayor of Wasilla<, she brought this 'small town' through a lot of GOOD changes and left it at the end of her term having grown to the 4th largest CITY in Alaska  a lot of growth and a stronger economic base than ever before. She has EXECTUTIVE experience *running a government* (something NONE of the other candidates can actually boast, even John McCain) as Governor of Alaska and got there by defeating the *incumbent* Republican Governor, who was definitely part of the 'old school' and who WAS very much in the pocket of the big oil companies. We in Alaska wanted change  and we got it in the person of Sarah Palin! [Remainder of letter here.] here Yet another letter, this one attributed to Butch King, a "lifetime Alaskan" who is also a proprietor of the Wildman Lake Lodge, attempted to answer (positively) the question of "Who is Sarah Palin?": Many of our friends are asking us "Who is Sarah Palin?" Of course, as Alaskans, Kathy and I are extremely proud of her. We just want to let you know that Sarah "Barracuda" Palin is a straight shooting, hard charging, get it done gal. She knows when to listen, how to analyze the facts and how to make a decision, then implement the plan. She doesn't do a poll before jumping in with both feet like too many of the Washington types. She has little legislative experience because she has always held the EXECUTIVE position; in private life, as mayor of Anchorage 's largest bedroom community or more recently as Governor of our State. She is a smart, attractive home grown Alaska girl with excellent moral and family values. She can see what needs to be done and does not hesitate to get it done. One of our State's major problems is that its Capital is in Juneau, 500 miles from the nearest road and 800 air miles from the population base which is Anchorage, Wasilla and Fairbanks. Our legislature and most of the State government is in Juneau and they ALL behave like a bunch of freshmen in a college town. It has been this way since Statehood in 1959. When Sarah moved to Juneau, so did accountability and responsibility When the oil revenue started flowing and a barrel of North Slope Crude hit $23.00, these people began spending money like drunken sailors. You can only imagine what was happening when oil hit $100.00 a barrel, about the time Sarah took command. My wife Kathy has first-hand experience with this fiasco, as her father and also her ex-husband were Alaska Legislators who served in Juneau as Senators, Senate President, or members of the State House for a combined period spanning nearly three decades. About the time Sarah took the HELM as Governor of Alaska, about half of the State legislature was in the pocket of big oil companies or contractors doing big projects for Native Corporations around Alaska, all funded by State oil revenue. Alaska government was nothing but a good old boys club riding the perpetual wave of prosperity. This filtered down from the legislature, through the Department of Natural Resources, Department of Labor and even spilled in to the Public Safety who are supposed to "preserve and protect". [Remainder of letter here.] here Another entry, attributed only to an "Alaskan" named "Jackie S." (we haven't yet determined the author's true identity), cast Governor Palin as an environmentally unfriendly "redneck": As an Alaskan, I am writing to give all of you some information on Sarah Palin, Senator McCain's choice for VP. As an Alaska voter, I know more than most of you about her and, frankly, I am horrified that he picked her. The most accurate description of her is redneck. Her husband works in the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay and races snow mobiles. She is a life time member of the NRA and has worked tirelessly to allow indiscriminatehunting of wildlife in Alaska, particularly wolves and bears. She has spent millions of Alaska state dollars on aerial hunting of these predators from helicopters and airplanes, dollars that should have been spent, for example, on Alaska's failing school system. We have the lowest rate of high school graduation in the country. Not all of you may think aerial predator hunting is so bad, but how anyone (other than Alaskawolf-haters, of which there are many, most without teeth), could think this use of funds is appropriate is beyond me. If you want to know more about the aerial hunting travesty, let me know and I will send some links to informative web sites. She has been a strong supporter of increased use of fossil fuels, yet the  McCain campaign has the nerve to say she has "green" policies. The only thing green about Sarah Palin is her lack of experience. She hasconsistently supported drilling in ANWR, use of coal-burning power plants (as I write this, a new coal plant is being built in her home town of Wasilla), strip mining, and almost anything else that will unnecessarilyexploit the diminishing resources of Alaska and destroy its environment. [Remainder of letter here.] here Last updated:  13 September 2008    Sources:   Schultz, Susy.  "Alaska Resident Writes About VP Nominee Palin."   The [Illinois] Daily Journal.  4 September 2008.    White, Rindi.  "Palin Asked Wasilla Librarian About Censoring Books."   Anchorage Daily News.  4 September 2008.    The Nation.  "The Word from Wasilla."   4 September 2008. Gov. Terry McAuliffe sees Cuba as a land of opportunity. Amid President Barack Obamas historic trip to Cuba this past week, McAuliffe said in an interview that Virginia already has made impressive headway in tapping the island nations export market. Virginia now is the number one exporter of ag (agricultural) products to Cuba, McAuliffe said during a March 21 MSNBC interview. We have now jumped to number one. In January, the governor returned from a trip to Cuba aimed at bolstering the commonwealths commercial ties with the nation. The U.S. still has a decades-long embargo on most trade with Cuba. But a 2000 law allows limited exports of agricultural products and medical equipment. In 2014, Obama re-established formal diplomatic relations with Cuba. McAuliffe supports ending the trade embargo. Brian Coy, the governors spokesman, pointed us to a Feb. 12 news release where McAuliffeannouncedthat last year Virginia exported $41.6 million in agricultural goods to Cuba, all of it soybeans and soybean meal. In past years, Virginia also has shipped apples, poultry and beef. McAuliffe said the 2015 export tally was the most that any state had sent to Cuba that year. We tracked down the same trade figures through an onlinedatabaseprovided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It shows that in 2015, Virginias $41.6 million indeed was the most of any state, followed by Georgia, which had $30.9 million in agricultural exports to Cuba; and Florida, which had $29.9 million in exports. Rounding out the top five agricultural exporters to Cuba were Alabama and Louisiana. Altogether, the U.S. exported nearly $150 million in agricultural goods to Cuba last year. A 2015articlefrom the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond noted Virginias farm exports accounted for 28 percent of all U.S. agricultural exports last year, compared with the 21 percent share for Georgia and 20 percent share for Florida. Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Louisiana generally have dominated the share of U.S. exports to Cuba since 2011. McAuliffe is correct that the 2015 figures are a turnabout of sorts for Virginia. In 2012, the state had $65.6 million in agricultural exports to Cuba, and that fell to $24.9 million in 2014, ranking it fifth behind those other four Southern states. Last year was the first time Virginia reached the goal of becoming the top agricultural exporter to Cuba, said Todd Haymore, the states secretary of agriculture and forestry. Haymore told us Virginia and other Southern states proximity to Cuba provides an advantage in tapping the Cuban market. Other factors helped, he said. For example, Georgia has focused on expanding an agricultural export facility in Savannah, Haymore said. Florida, meanwhile, has extensive port operations, the secretary said. Haymore said a significant share of Virginias agricultural exports to Cuba were produced in the commonwealth, although he added that Virginias ports also ship products that originate from other states, including Maryland and North Carolina. This year, it looks like Virginia has some serious competition if it wants to retain its billing as the top agricultural exporter to Cuba. Figures from January, the only month for which export figures are available so far this year, show that Louisiana sent $17.9 million in agricultural exports to Cuba that month, and Alabama sent $2.1 million. Virginias $1.7 million ranked third. While Virginia has seen its exports to Cuba go up and down and then back up in recent years, its been a different story for U.S. trade to the island nation. The total value of all U.S. exports to Cuba actually has been waning, even amid White House overtures to open trade. U.S. exports to Cuba dropped from $464.5 million in 2012 to $180.3 million last year, according to figures from the U.S. Commerce Department. Our ruling McAuliffe said Virginia is the top exporter of agricultural products to Cuba. The numbers from the latest year available back his claim. We rate his statement True. Fans of former president Barack Obama -- or at least critics who like seeing current President Donald Trump get roasted online -- might have gotten their hopes up at what appeared to be a Twitter jab aimed at Trump by his predecessor. But the truth is, the tweet was manufactured. On 1 August 2018, an image began circulating online designed to look like it issued from Obama's Twitter account, with wording that read, "What type of ID do we need to buy groceries I'm at the store and all I have on me is my birth certificate":   Actually, Barack Obama only posted two tweets that day  one of them listed the Democratic Party candidates he was endorsing in the 2018 midterm elections, and the other promoted those candidates: listed other I'm confident that, together, they'll strengthen this country we love by restoring opportunity, repairing our alliances and standing in the world, and upholding our fundamental commitment to justice, fairness, responsibility, and the rule of law. But first, they need our votes. The fake tweet contained two barbs aimed at the current president. It made light of Trump's already widely-derided argument for voter identification cards offered during a 31 July 2018 speech, when the President said, "If you go out and you want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card, you need ID. You go out, you want to buy anything, you need ID, you need your picture." widely-derided  In reality, shoppers only need to produce identification when purchasing age-restricted items such as cigarettes or alcohol, or picking up prescriptions from grocery stores that include pharmacies. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said a day later that Trump was referring to alcohol purchases when he made the remark. said The "birth certificate" reference in the fake Obama tweet was also a callback to Trump's longtime promotion of the "birther" conspiracy theory, which claimed that Obama was not born in the U.S. and consequently ineligible to be president.  In 2011, Trump claimed credit for the fact that Obama released his long-form birth certificate. But unidentified advisers reportedly said in 2017 that even after being elected president, Trump "used closed-door conversations to question the authenticity" of his predecessor's birth certificate. claimed released reportedly Snider, Mike.  "ID for Groceries? Trump Trolled on Twitter for His Shopping Comment at Florida Rally."
  USA Today.  2 August 2018. Levy, Pema.  "Sanders Defends Trump on Needing an ID to Buy Groceries."
  Mother Jones.  1 August 2018. Scherer, Michael.  "Birtherism Is Dead, But the Birther Industry Continues."
nbsp;  TIME.  27 April 2011. Haberman, Maggie and Jonathan Martin.  "Trump Once Said the 'Access Hollywood' Tape Was Real. Now He's Not Sure."
  The New York Times.  28 November 2017. In January 2020, as the 2020 Democratic presidential primary progressed, we received multiple inquiries from readers about the accuracy of a widely shared claim about U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren's professional background.  A social media meme contained the following text: meme "'As Elizabeth Warren closes the night with complaints about cost of college for students, just remember she was paid $400,000 to teach one class' -- Katie Pavlich."   The meme originated in a tweet published on July 30, 2019, by Katie Pavlich, a Fox News contributor and editor of the right-leaning website Townhall. She was referring to Warren's appearance at that evening's Democratic primary debate in Detroit, Michigan. debate Critics of Warren have leveled accusations of hypocrisy against her in the past, and those claims have at times touched on the level of her pay while she taught at Harvard. In 2014, for example, Snopes addressed memes that alleged the U.S. senator "lives in a $5.4 million mansion" and was paid "$350,000 to teach one class," all while purportedly "lecturing" the public on economic inequality. addressed The allegation that Warren was paid $400,000 to teach a single course at Harvard University is one that dates back to her 2012 U.S. Senate campaign in Massachusetts. In a Senate financial-disclosure statement filed in December 2011, Warren revealed that for "2010 + 2011 to date," Harvard had paid her $429,981 in her capacity as a law professor. disclosure Regardless of one's subjective opinion of the salary paid by Harvard to Warren, it is essential to note that college professors, especially those who work at prominent and reputable institutions like Harvard, are typically expected to do more than just teach courses in return for their salaries, and those salaries can be based on several factors including the volume, quality, and influence of their published research, the level of their expertise and reputation in a particular field, and so on. Similarly, their duties typically extend beyond teaching coursework and conducting research, and can include advising and mentoring students, peer review, organizing and taking part in conferences, moderating or participating in faculty or student groups and organizations, leading or attending departmental meetings, and on occasion representing and boosting the public reputation of their respective institutions by providing expert commentary to the news media  the latter a duty that Warren discharged particularly frequently, before she began her political career. Warren, long recognized as a leading expert in bankruptcy, debt, and consumer law, won several teaching awards, including at Harvard, and wrote or contributed to several dozen academic books, book chapters, and journal articles. One 2010 study found that Warren's academic research was among the most widely cited in the field of bankruptcy and commercial law, in the five years leading up to the 2010 spring semester. awards Harvard several dozen study So while the salary figure presented in Pavlich's tweet (and the subsequent meme) was accurate, it was misleading to claim Harvard was paying Warren more than $400,000 merely "to teach one class." Nonetheless, it is true that the future senator's teaching duties did taper off towards the end of her tenure at Harvard. During the fall 2009 semester, Warren taught contracts law, according to a Harvard course catalog, and she also taught a year-long "Empirical Analysis of Law" course over the fall 2009 and spring 2010 semesters. course catalog In September 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama appointed Warren as a special adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, with responsibility for the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency she helped to conceive and create. As a result, Warren stepped back completely from teaching duties during the fall 2010 and spring 2011 semesters, as reflected in a 2010/11 course catalog. However, she returned to Harvard in July 2011 and taught a course on contracts law during the fall 2011 semester. appointed course catalog taught In 2010, Warren also contributed a chapter entitled "Redesigning Regulation: A Case Study from the Consumer Credit Market" to an academic book entitled "Government and Markets: Toward a New Theory of Regulation," which was edited by David A. Moss from Harvard Business School and Duke University's Edward J. Balleisen. contributed According to Warren's May 2012 Senate financial-disclosure statements, she took unpaid leave from Harvard during the spring and fall semesters in 2012 (that is, during her Senate campaign), and according to her May 2013 disclosure, her tenure as a Harvard professor ended when she joined the U.S. Senate in January 2013. disclosure  disclosure According to Warren's December 2011 financial-disclosure statement, she was paid more than $400,000 by Harvard in 2010 and 2011. During that period, she taught two courses: one in the spring 2010 semester, and another in the fall 2011 semester. From September 2010 to July 2011, Warren was on leave while helping to establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and therefore did not teach during that time. Katie Pavlich's July 2019 tweet, and subsequent memes, accurately described Harvard as having paid Warren around $400,000 (in fact it was closer to $430,000) but failed to specify that the salary covered 2010 and 2011. The tweet also misled readers by claiming Warren had been paid her salary simply to teach classes, because academic salaries typically take into account several factors other than the number of courses taught by a professor, and this is especially so for highly reputable academics such as Warren, at prestigious institutions such as Harvard. Finally, the tweet (and memes) also misrepresented the number of classes Warren taught during the period for which she was paid more than $400,000. It was two, not one. Taking into account that set of facts, we are issuing a rating of "Mixture." Snopes.com.  "Did Elizabeth Warren Lie About Her Native American Heritage to Land a Job at Harvard?"
  30 October 2014. U.S. Senate. "United States Senate Financial Disclosure Report for New Employee and Candidate Reports -- Elizabeth Warren."
  22 December 2011. U.S. Senate.  "United States Senate Financial Disclosure Report for New Employee and Candidate Reports -- Elizabeth Warren."
  11 May 2012. Harvard Law School.  "Elizabeth Warren Wins Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching."
  3 June 2009. Leiter, Brian.  "Top 25 Law Faculties in Scholarly Impact, 2005-2009."
  Accessed 22 January 2020. The Obama White House.  "President Obama Names Elizabeth Warren Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau."
  17 September 2010. Johnson, Glen.  "GOP Presses Harvard to End Pay for Warren."
  The Boston Globe.  21 September 2011. U.S. Senate.  "United States Senate Financial Disclosure Report for New Employee and Candidate Reports -- Elizabeth Warren."
  14 May 2013. Claim:  Article chronicles aspects of Senator Ted Kennedy's life and career. true Example:  [Collected via e-mail, August 2009] The Last of The Kennedy Dynasty As soon as his cancer was detected, I noticed the immediate attempt at the "canonization" of old Teddy Kennedy by the mainstream media. They are saying what a "great American" he is. I say, let's get a couple things clear & not twist the facts to change the real history. 1. He was caught cheating at Harvard when he attended it. He was expelled twice, once for cheating on a test, and once for paying aclassmate to cheat for him. 2. While expelled, Kennedy enlisted in the Army, but mistakenly signed up for four years instead of two. Oops! The man can't count to four! His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, former U.S. Ambassador to England (a step up from bootlegging liquor into the US from Canada during prohibition), pulled the necessary strings to have his enlistment shortened to two years, and to ensure that he served in Europe, not Korea, where a war was raging. No preferential treatment for him!  3. Kennedy was assigned to Paris, never advanced beyond the rank of Private, and returned to Harvard upon being discharged. Imagine a person of his "education" NEVER advancing past the rank of Private! 4. While attending law school at the University of Virginia, he was cited for reckless driving four times, including once when he was clocked driving 90 miles per hour in a residential neighborhood with his headlights off after dark. Yet his Virginia driver's license was never revoked. Coincidentally, he passed the bar exam in 1959. Amazing! 5. In 1964, he was seriously injured in a plane crash, and hospitalized for several months. Test results done by the hospital at the time he was admitted had shown he was legally intoxicated. The results of those tests remained a "state secret" until in the 1980's when the report was unsealed. Didn't hear about that from the unbiased media, did we? 6. On July 19, 1969, Kennedy attended a party on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts. At about 11:00 PM, he borrowed his chauffeur's keys to his Oldsmobile limousine, and offered to give a ride home to Mary Jo Kopechne, a campaign worker. Leaving the island via an unlit bridge with no guard rail, Kennedy steered the car off the bridge, flipped, and into Poucha Pond. 7. He swam to shore and walked back to the party, passing several houses and a fire station. Two friends then returned with him to the scene of the accident. According to their later testimony, they told him what he already knew  that he was required by law to immediately report the accident to the authorities. Instead Kennedy made his way to his hotel, called his lawyer, and went to sleep. Kennedy called the police the next morning and by then the wreck had already been discovered. Before dying, Kopechne had scratched at the upholstered floor above her head in the upside-down car. The Kennedy family began "calling in favors", ensuring that any inquiry would be contained. Her corpse was whisked out-of-state to her family, before an autopsy could be conducted. Further details are uncertain, but after the accident Kennedy says he repeatedly dove under the water trying to rescue Kopechne and he didn't call police because he was in a state of shock. It is widely assumed Kennedy was drunk, and he held off calling police in hopes that his family could fix the problem overnight. Since the accident, Kennedy's "political enemies" have referred to him as the distinguished Senator from Chappaquiddick. He pled guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, and was given a SUSPENDED SENTENCE OF TWO MONTHS. Kopechne's family received a small payout from the Kennedy's insurance policy, and never sued. There was later an effort to have her body exhumed and autopsied, but her family successfully fought against this in court, and Kennedy's family paid their attorney's bills ... a "token of friendship"? 8. Kennedy has held his Senate seat for more than forty years, but considering his longevity, his accomplishments seem scant. He authored or argued for legislation that ensured a variety of civil rights, increased the minimum wage in 1981, made access to health care easier for the indigent, and funded Meals on Wheels for fixed-income seniors and is widely held as the "standard-bearer for liberalism". In his very first Senate roll, he was the floor manager for the bill that turned U.S. immigration policy upside down and opened the floodgate for immigrants from third world countries. 9. Since that time, he has been the prime instigator and author of every expansion of an increase in immigration, up to and including the latest attempt to grant amnesty to illegal aliens. 10. He is known around Washington as a public drunk, loud, boisterous and very disrespectful to ladies. Origins:  It's probably impossible for a politician such as Edward M. ("Ted") Kennedy  the youngest child in a family that included a U.S. President (John) and a U.S. Attorney General and Senator (Robert)  to have served as long as he did without acquiring a good many admirers and detractors.  When Ted Kennedy died of cancer in August 2009, after a career spanning more than 46 years as a U.S. Senator, both groups offered their observations, laudatory and critical, on his life and career.   The much-circulated example cited above, of the critical variety, is true in its broad outlines (although some of its subjective observations are questionable): 1)  Ted Kennedy did get expelled from Harvard for cheating (but not twice: a single incident has erroneously been represented as two different events in the example reproduced above).  At the end of his freshman year at Harvard College, in 1951, Kennedy arranged for a classmate to take a Spanish exam in his place: As it had been at Milton [Academy], Spanish was the course that gave Teddy the most difficulty at Harvard. For the others, he would muddle through with C's, he thought, but as the final examination approached, he felt in danger of failing both the test and the course, which would render him ineligible for varsity football in the fall, an intolerable prospect. Knowing he could not pass the examination himself, he arranged to have a friend [Bill Frate], much more proficient in the language, take it for him, signing Teddy's name to the booklet. As it happened, however, the graduate student assigned as proctor for the Spanish examination that day was personally acquainted with the student whom Teddy had recruited as his stand-in. When the stand-in, who did exceedingly well on the test, handed in the booklet, the proctor saw that he'd signed it "Edward M. Kennedy." Perhaps no more than an hour later, [Kennedy and Frate] were both called to the dean's office and expelled. They were told they could apply for readmission in a year or two if they behaved themselves. That was not the most severe punishment Harvard imposed, but it was typical in serious cases. [The preponderance of sources suggest that Frate agreed to take Kennedy's exam for him out of friendship, not because he was paid for his efforts.] 2. With Kennedy's expulsion from Harvard in 1951, he was ineligible for a student deferment and therefore subject to the draft (which had been re-initiated after the Korean War broke out in mid-1950).  In June 1951, he enlisted in the U.S. Army for four years, a term which his father's intervention shortened to two years: On the morning Ted enlisted for four years, the newspapers reported truce proposals [in Korea] but also severe Communist attacks, along with twenty-eight New England casualties.  Joe Kennedy, having lost one son to war, was furious, asking Ted, "Don't you ever look at what you're signing?" In those days, most young men understood the laws about military service, even if they had a student deferment. But Ted did not know that he had the option of volunteering for induction, in effect getting drafted when he chose and for the draft's two years. After Joe intervened, Ted got the shorter term. 3.  Also due largely to his father's influence, Ted Kennedy spent the bulk of his military service stationed in Paris:  Joe had no intention of letting Teddy get anywhere near the war in Korea. Instead, Teddy was inducted at Fort Dix, New Jersey, sent to Fort Gordon, Georgia, for basic training, and then shipped to Paris, where his father had arranged for his assignment to a military police honor guard detachment which had the wholly ceremonial task of standing watch over the NATO headquarters office located there. Kennedy was discharged from the Army in March 1953 with the rank of private first class, returned to Cambridge (where he took two summer school courses), and was readmitted to Harvard for the fall 1953 term.   The comment about a "person of his 'education'" only having attained the rank of private is something of an anachronism, as at the time Kennedy enlisted in the military he had little more than a high school education (having been expelled from Harvard at the end of his freshman year).  The bulk of his education (his final three years at Harvard and an additional four years of law school) did not take place until after his discharge from the Army. 4.  Ted Kennedy was known for driving wildly and accumulating speeding tickets while attending the University of Virginia (UVa) law school, prompting his UVa alumnus brother Robert to quip (during a talk at the school) that their mother had asked him to find out "what side of the court my brother is going to appear on when he gets out of law school, attorney or defendant." After the most serious incident (involving a police chase at speeds up to 90 MPH), Kennedy was arrested and charged with reckless driving and driving without a license (he possessed a valid license but had left it at home), an arrest which his father managed to keep out of the news for several weeks.   There does not appear to be a record of his driver's license having been revoked (but standards for mandatory revocation may have been quite different fifty years ago).   We're unsure what "amazing coincidence" supposedly connects Kennedy's having been arrested for reckless driving in Virginia in March 1958 and his having passed the Massachusetts bar exam in August 1959. 5.  On the evening of 19 June 1964, after a late vote in the U.S. Senate on a civil rights bill, Senator Ted Kennedy boarded a six-seat private plane to fly to the Massachusetts Democratic Party convention in West Springfield.  The plane crashed on approach to Barnes Municipal Airport in conditions of marginal visibility; the  pilot and a Kennedy aide were killed; Kennedy himself suffered crushed and fractured vertebrae, a collapsed lung, and several broken ribs, injuries which required several months of hospitalization and rehabilitation. The mention of Kennedy's supposedly having been "legally intoxicated" at the time of the accident is a red herring  he was a passenger in the plane, not the pilot, and was not responsible for the crash.  (The Civil Aeronautics Board found the probable cause to be "an improperly executed instrument approach in which improper altitude control resulted in a descent below obstructed terrain.") 6.-7.  The July 1969 "Chappaquiddick incident," in which Mary Jo Kopechne (a former campaign worker for Robert F. Kennedy) drowned after Ted Kennedy drove the car in which he and Mary Jo were riding off the side of a bridge late one evening, is well known and too complex a subject for us to adequately summarize in a paragraph or two, so interested readers might wish to peruse Wikipedia's entry on that topic.   entry It's fair to say that, at the very least, Kennedy's actions after the Chappaquiddick accident (particularly his failure to report it to authorities until well into the following morning) were both questionable and inexcusable. As Kennedy biographer Adam Clymer wrote of the Chappaquiddick controversy: No other automobile accident in history has stirred as much suspicion and speculation. There is no question that the authorities, simultaneously sympathetic, in awe, and in fear of a messy case involving a hugely popular Senator, did a terrible job of investigating the accident. The Kennedy camp did not help, but in legal terms, it did nothing to obstruct, either. Absent different evidence, it is almost impossible to see how the authorities could have proved a more serious crime [than leaving the scene of an accident]. The accident itself is consistent with the fact that Kennedy was a terrible, easily distracted driver. Moreover, even if he had only the two drinks he reported, liquor probably mattered. He was almost certainly not legally drunk in 1969, when the blood alcohol standard was 0.15 percent. He might not even have been over the current Massachusetts standard, which is 0.08.  But any alcohol consumption diminishes driving ability.  There is no direct evidence that Kennedy dove to the wrecked car. Some critics have dismissed his account, claiming that his bad back and the tides made this impossible. But since childhood, Kennedy had taken physical risks. After he broke his back, he was skiing on difficult slopes again the next year. Adrenaline would have boosted his energy. There is no reason to doubt that he tried as hard as he could to rescue Mary Jo immediately. Just as there was no good excuse for Kennedy's not knocking on doors until he found a house with a telephone, there was no excuse at all for [Kennedy friend and former U.S. Attorney Paul] Markham and [Kennedy cousin Joe] Gargan's failing to summon help. Each was a lawyer, and [unlike Kennedy] neither had a concussion. Their instinct, and perhaps Kennedy's too, appears to have been to prevent disclosure of his having been in the car with a pretty young woman under circumstances that invited suspicion. Nevertheless, it is very unlikely that faster action to summon help would in fact have saved her life. Considering that it took more than an hour to get her body out the next morning, when everyone involved was already awake and dressed and visibility was good, Lange and Dewitt [authors of Chappaquiddick: The Real Story] argue convincingly that she had to have died before help would have arrived in the middle of the night. But Markham, Gargan, and Kennedy didn't know that. They should not have worried about how it would look and should have called the police without delay. 8.  How one evaluates the accomplishments and achievements of Ted Kennedy's 46-year tenure as a U.S. Senator is a subjective issue, but no even-handed evaluation could fairly describe them as "scant."  Wikipedia, for example, observes that: Wikipedia Since his presidential bid [in 1980], Kennedy became one of the most recognizable and influential members of the party, and was sometimes called a "Democratic icon" as well as "The Lion of the Senate". Kennedy and his Senate staff had written about 2,500 bills, of which more than 300 were enacted into law. Kennedy had co-sponsored another 550 bills that became law since 1973.  Kennedy was known for his effectiveness in dealing with Republican senators and administrations, sometimes to the irritation of Democrats. During the 101st Congress under President George H. W. Bush, fully half of the successful proposals put forward by the Senate Democratic policy makers came out of Kennedy's Labor and Human Resources Committee. During the 2000s, almost every bipartisan bill signed during the George W. Bush administration had significant involvement from Kennedy. A late 2000s survey of Republican senators ranked Kennedy first among Democrats in bipartisanship. Kennedy strongly believed in the principle "never let the perfect be the enemy of the good," and would agree to pass legislation he viewed as incomplete or imperfect with the goal of improving it down the road. In April 2006, Kennedy was selected by Time as one of "America's 10 Best Senators"; the magazine noted that he had "amassed a titanic record of legislation affecting the lives of virtually every man, woman and child in the country" and that "by the late 1990s, the liberal icon had become such a prodigious cross-aisle dealer that Republican leaders began pressuring party colleagues not to sponsor bills with him". (A [partisan] list of Kennedy's accomplishments published on his portion of the U.S. Senate web site can be viewed here.) here Ted Kennedy was a strong advocate for the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, a bill that abolished U.S. national-origin immigration quotas which had been in place since 1924  quotas that apportioned immigration visas according to the demographic breakdown of the U.S. as recorded by the 1920 census and thereby placed few limits on immigrants from Western and Northern Europe but strict limits on immigrants from the rest of the world. Although Kennedy argued during debate on the bill that "Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [this bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia. In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think," the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 did have a significant impact on immigration patterns: President Kennedy proposed a new immigration structure that would no longer be based on national origins. After Kennedy's assassination, his brother Ted took up the fight, pushing the Johnson administration to go even further than it wanted in evening the playing field. Though Lyndon Johnson, in signing the bill, tried to reassure opponents that it wouldn't do much to change the balance of immigration, its impact was dramatic. In the 1950s, 53 percent of all immigrants were Europeans and just 6 percent were Asians; by the 1990s, just 16 percent were Europeans and 31 percent were Asians. The percentages of Latino and African immigrants also jumped significantly. In 1965, the U.S. was around 85 percent white, according to various estimates. Today, a third of the country is minority, and nonwhites are on track to become the majority sometime in the 2040s. Minority populations have grown by leaps and bounds because of high birth rates among those first generations of immigrants and a steady flow from Latin America, Asia and Africa since. 9.  During his long career in the U.S. Senate, Ted Kennedy was certainly a consistent advocate of immigration policy reform: Historians and immigrant advocates are remembering the senator  perhaps more than any other  as championing legislation that directly benefited immigrants, their children and their grandchildren. The 1965 law that he sponsored fundamentally changed the demographics of the country and transformed many urban enclaves into majority-minority cities. But they say Kennedy also remained a "point man" in the Senate for immigrant advocates and minorities throughout his career, even supporting recent proposals to overhaul immigration laws aimed at undocumented workers. Kennedy advocated for the children of immigrants and minorities by pushing legislation on voting rights and health care for uninsured children. The list of accomplishments on Kennedy's web site describes his efforts in this area thusly: Senator Kennedy had long been convinced that legal immigration is good for our country. As such, he had been at the forefront of efforts to improve U.S. immigration policy by sponsoring beneficial legislation and opposing initiatives that are harmful to immigrants and refugees. In 1986, Senator Kennedy worked to obtain legal status for undocumented workers and address the potential for increased employment discrimination against immigrant workers as a result of the employer sanction provisions. He was the lead sponsor of the Immigration Act of 1990, which increased the quotas for family immigration, established a diversity visa program, and created a temporary safe haven program for persons fleeing oppressive governments. He was also an original sponsor of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act and its re-authorization in 2000, which allows battered immigrant women and children to apply for permanent residence without the cooperation of their abusive spouses or parents. He strongly opposed the harsh 1996 immigration laws, which divided families, returned refugees to the hands of their persecutors, and denied immigrants their day in court, as well as the 1996 welfare law that turned immigrants into second class citizens, and he continues to work to eliminate the harshest provisions of these laws. His goal was to preserve families, assure fairness and due process, and maintain the integrity of our immigration laws. Senator Kennedy believed that immigrants deserve the same due process protections available to U.S. citizens, and that it is contrary to basic principles of fairness and justice to take immigrants from their U.S. citizen families, without even an opportunity to have their day in court.  He also helped lead the way in efforts to restore fairness and justice to immigrants and refugees. Senator Kennedy's support was instrumental in restoring public benefits, such as Food Stamps, Supplemental Security Income and Medicaid, to countless elderly, disabled, and legal immigrants. He continues to push for the further restoration of benefits to all legal immigrants. 10.   No one could deny that Ted Kennedy was known as a drinker and a womanizer, particularly in the earlier years of his life.  As the Miami Herald noted of his passing: For his many critics, the flaws in Kennedy's character and his mistakes  above all, Chappaquiddick  overshadow his good works. He paid for that by losing the campaign to unseat President Carter in 1980 and later suffered humiliations over his drinking and womanizing. Ultimately, he turned his energies to Congress and forged one of the great Senate careers. Last updated:  30 August 2009    Canellos, Peter S.  "Obama Victory Took Root in Kennedy-Inspired Immigration Act."   The Boston Globe.  11 November 2008.    Canellos, Peter S.  Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy.   New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009.  ISBN 1-4391-4873-2.    Clymer, Adam.  Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography.   New York: William Morrow, 1999.  ISBN 0-688-14285-0.    Contreras, Russell.  "For Immigrants, Kennedy Remained Tireless Advocate."   Associated Press.  29 August 2009.    McGinniss, Joe.  The Last Brother: The Rise and Fall of Teddy Kennedy.   New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.  ISBN 0-671-67945-7.    Miami Herald.  "Ted Kennedy: The Lion Sleeps."   27 August 2009. The protracted, often bloody Israeli-Palestinian conflict exploded into a hot war on Oct. 7, 2023, when the militant Palestinian group Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel and Israel retaliated by bombarding the Gaza Strip. More than 20,000 people, the vast majority of them Palestinians, were reportedly killed during the first two months of the war alone. The violence is driven by mutual hostilities and territorial ambitions dating back more than a century. The internet has become an unofficial front in that war and is rife with misinformation, which Snopes is dedicated to countering with facts and context. You can help. Read the latest fact checks. Submit questionable claims. Become a Snopes Member to support our work. We welcome your participation and feedback. Israeli-Palestinian conflict Hamas deadly attack on Israel retaliated were reportedly killed mutual hostilities Read Submit Become a Snopes Member feedback On Jan. 26, 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered a ruling on emergency measures requested by South Africa over Israels ongoing military campaign in the Gaza Strip. Many online erroneously claimed South Africa had therefore won the case and that Israel had been declared a genocidal state by the court. For example: delivered online erroneously claimed (Screenshot via X) However, South Africa has not officially won the case, even though the ICJ ordered nearly all of South Africas requested provisional measures to be carried out, with the exception of a cease-fire. The judges have not ruled on the merits of the genocide allegations  and it could take years before they reach a decision. ordered As such, we rate the above claim as False, with the caveat that the judges agreed with some of South Africas arguments in their provisional ruling  that the ICJ had jurisdiction and that South Africa had standing to bring the case  and did not accept Israels request to dismiss the case, as there were plausible claims of possible genocidal acts. agreed plausible The ICJ did not, however, order a cease-fire in Gaza, which was the key request in South Africas list of emergency measures.  however Earlier in January 2024, South Africa argued that Israels actions amounted to genocide against the Palestinian people, noting that more than 23,000 Palestinians had been killed in Israeli operations since October 2023, and asked the court to halt the operations. Israel rejected South Africas claims and argued it had the right of self-defense after Hamas Oct. 7, 2023, attack, which resulted in the deaths of around 1,200 Israelis, most of whom were civilians. argued noting rejected deaths Stopping short of ordering a cease-fire, the ICJs interim ruling was a series of provisional measures that effectively ordered Israel to comply with the 1948 Genocide Convention. The provisions outlined by ICJ President Joan Donoghue are as follows (summarized by Al Jazeera): Al Jazeera The full order can be read on the ICJ's website. the ICJ's website David Simon, director of the genocide studies program at Yale University, told Snopes over email that the court stopping short of ordering a cease-fire could be some unspoken deference to Israel's self-defense argument. What [the court] is trying to say  is we would be overstepping our bounds if we called for the cessation of all military activities, but you have to make sure that nothing you do [constitutes] genocide, or is comprised of acts of genocide. Simon added that the ruling was consistent with provisional measures issued in Gambia v. Myanmar, referring to the 2019 case in which Gambia took Myanmar to the ICJ, accusing it of committing genocide against the Rohingya. In 2020, the court directed Myanmar to "take all measures within its power" to prevent the commission of acts defined in the Genocide Convention. The case is still ongoing. provisional measures 2019 case 2020 In both cases, the ICJ is aware that its jurisdiction is over state compliance with the Genocide Convention, not matters of the criminal liability of individuals, he said. Donoghue noted that while the court could not at present make a final determination on whether Israel is guilty of genocide, given the deteriorating situation in Gaza the court had jurisdiction to order measures to protect Gaza's population from further risk of genocide. noted Before announcing the decision, Donoghue read statements from Israeli officials that she said made South Africas case plausible and gave an assessment of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The order called attention to a series of statements made by Israeli leadership  described variously as incitements to genocide and as "dehumanizing" Palestinians by scholars  in particular Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, President Isaac Herzog and Foreign Affairs Minister Israel Katz (then Minister of Energy and Infrastructure when he made the statement). For example, the order stated: read order described then example [...] the Court has taken note of a number of statements made by senior Israeli officials. It calls attention, in particular, to the following examples. 52. On 9 October 2023, Mr Yoav Gallant, Defence Minister of Israel, announced that he had ordered a complete siege of Gaza City and that there would be no electricity, no food, no fuel and that everything [was] closed. On the following day, Minister Gallant stated, speaking to Israeli troops on the Gaza border: I have released all restraints . . . You saw what we are fighting against. We are fighting human animals. This is the ISIS of Gaza. This is what we are fighting against . . . Gaza wont return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate everything. If it doesnt take one day, it will take a week, it will take weeks or even months, we will reach all places. Simon told us that the court taking notice of those statements gives credence to South Africas arguments of genocidal incitement that we discussed in more detail in our past coverage. coverage He noted: That Israel has already announced that it would crack down on incitement suggests that it is aware of its vulnerability to [findings] against it on this matter. A court need not find 'intent to destroy' when asking whether a state has taken sufficient measures to prevent genocide incitement, only that it has been essentially negligent with respect to others within its jurisdiction who may be articulating such intent.  Crucially, the court found that a number of South Africas arguments were plausible, stating: stating In the Court's view, the facts and circumstances mentioned above are sufficient to conclude that at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa and for which it is seeking protection are plausible. This is the case with respect to the right of the Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts identified in Article III, and the right of South Africa to seek Israel's compliance with the latter's obligations under the Convention. Ultimately, the ICJ cannot force Israel to do anything, as we previously outlined. However, international scrutiny on how Israel characterizes its actions in Gaza will be higher, Simon pointed out. outlined Israel will presumably calculate that there is a reputational loss (beyond what it has already absorbed) to making tenuous arguments, so it will want to be able to claim it has taken real measures, he added. Because Israel already has argued that it is in compliance with the Genocide Convention, it is unlikely to drastically change course, according to Simon, and South Africas right of rebuttal will become the forum to adjudicate further genocide claims. South Africas minister for international relations, Naledi Pandor, said that without a cease-fire Israel could not effectively implement the court-ordered measures. said Mahmood Mamdani, professor of government at Columbia University, told Democracy Now!: Democracy Now! It is clear to me that [the ICJ] couldnt have called directly for a ceasefire without preempting their future deliberations. At the same time, if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and sounds like a duck, then its a duck. Everything they ordered in terms of preventive measures leads to only one conclusion, which is ceasefire. How do you stop killing people? Ceasefire. How do you ensure that supplies for human life get in? Ceasefire. And so on and so forth. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the ICJs willingness to consider the genocide charges was a mark of shame that will not be erased for generations. He vowed to continue the war. said vowed We will continue to do what is necessary to defend our country and defend our people, he said. Like every country, Israel has the basic right to defend itself. The court in the Hague rightfully rejected the outrageous request to take that away from us. said Al Jazeera reported frustration and resentment on the part of Palestinians in Gaza in response to a ruling that did not include a cease-fire. People wanted an end to the madness and were waiting for that one statement that could have relieved an entire population largely displaced and, more profoundly, traumatised as the bombing continues across the Gaza Strip, the news outlet wrote. Al Jazeera Up until the order was announced, bombing continued in the city of Khan Younis and the northern part of the region, according to Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera In sum, the ICJ did not made a final judgment, but issued a number of provisional rulings while finding many of South Africas arguments were plausible and warranted a case. It did not call for a cease-fire. A definitive judgment will likely take years to come. Al-Kassab, Fatima. U.N. Court Says Gaza Genocide Is plausible, but Does Not Order Cease-Fire. NPR, 26 Jan. 2024. NPR, https://www.npr.org/2024/01/26/1227078791/icj-israel-genocide-gaza-palestinians-south-africa. Accessed 26 Jan. 2024. Berg, Stephanie van den, and Anthony Deutsch. World Court Says Israel Must Take Steps to Prevent Acts of Genocide in Gaza. Reuters, 26 Jan. 2024. www.reuters.com, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/world-court-rule-urgent-measures-gaza-genocide-case-2024-01-26/.Accessed 26 Jan. 2024. Day One of the ICJ Genocide Hearing against Israel: Key Takeaways. Al Jazeera, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/11/day-one-of-the-icj-genocide-hearing-against-israel-key-takeaways. Accessed 26 Jan. 2024. Frayer, Lauren. Israel Revises down Its Death Toll from the Oct. 7 Hamas Attacks to about 1,200. NPR, 11 Nov. 2023. NPR, https://www.npr.org/2023/11/11/1212458974/israel-revises-death-toll-hamas-attacks-oct-7.Accessed 26 Jan. 2024. Ibrahim, Nur. Israel-Hamas Explainer: What Constitutes a Genocide? Snopes, 22 Jan. 2024, https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/01/22/israel-hamas-what-is-genocide/.Accessed 26 Jan. 2024. ICJ Orders Israel to Prevent Genocide in Gaza But Doesnt Demand Ceasefire. Democracy Now!, https://www.democracynow.org/2024/1/26/icj_provisional_ruling_israel_genocide_gaza. Accessed 26 Jan. 2024. Milisic, Alma and Nils Adler. ICJ Updates: Court Orders Israel to Prevent Acts of Genocide in Gaza. Al Jazeera, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/1/26/live-icj-to-issue-preliminary-ruling-in-south-africa-genocide-case-against-i. Accessed 26 Jan. 2024. "Request for the Indication of Provisional Measures: Order." International Court of Justice , 26 Jan. 2024, https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240126-ord-01-00-en.pdf.Accessed 26 Jan. 2024. Salhani, Justin. What the ICJs Interim Ruling Means for Israels War on Gaza. Al Jazeera, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/26/what-the-icjs-interim-ruling-means-for-israels-war-on-gaza. Accessed 26 Jan. 2024. Simon, David. "Interview with David Simon." Email, 26 Jan. 2024. Top UN Court Orders Israel to Prevent Genocide in Gaza but Stops Short of Ordering Cease-Fire. AP News, 26 Jan. 2024, https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-genocide-court-south-africa-27cf84e16082cde798395a95e9143c06.Accessed 26 Jan. 2024.