“While Judicial Watch never makes endorsements of any political candidate, campaign, political party or legislation …
—First half of Judicial Watch Chairman Larry Klayman’s statement on Rep. Bob Barr’s primary defeat earlier this week.
“… we certainly respect and admire the work of Representative Barr, and are proud to have him as a client in his lawsuit against President Clinton, James Carville and Larry Flynt. We are confident that Bob Barr will continue to serve the American people in a variety of new ways, and that he will continue to be a major figure in public policy issues of interest to all Americans.”
—Second half of Klayman’s statement on Barr’s primary defeat. The statement appears in an Aug. 21 Judicial Watch press release headlined, “Judicial Watch Salutes Representative Bob Barr for His Years of Public Service.”
“In my years as Chairman of Judicial Watch, a public-interest law firm which fights government corruption, I have come upon many politicians who profess to have the same interests. In my experience, I have only found one public servant—in addition to a few judges—who have been willing to do what is right without weighing what was in it for them. One of these true American heroes is Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga. … We all owe a debt of gratitude to public servants like Representative Barr.”
—Klayman statement issued March 18, 2000. Since then, Barr has run for re-election twice.
Got a whopper? Send it to chatterbox@slate.com. To be considered, an entry must be an unambiguously false statement paired with an unambiguous refutation, and both must be derived from some appropriately reliable public source. Preference will be given to newspapers and other documents that Chatterbox can link to online.
Whopper Archive:
Aug. 2, 2002: Al Gore
July 26, 2002: Princeton admissions dean Stephen LeMenager
July 19, 2002: James Traficant
July 12, 2002: Maryland Lt. Gov. candidate Michael S. Steele
July 5, 2002: Hesham Mohamed Hadayet
June 28, 2002: WorldCom
June 21, 2002: Terry Lynn Barton
June 14, 2002: Tom Ridge
June 7, 2002: Former FBI Deputy Director Weldon Kennedy
May 31, 2002: Ari Fleischer
May 23, 2002: Condoleezza Rice
May 17, 2002: Robert Mueller
May 9, 2002: Karl Rove
May 3, 2002: Gen. Richard Myers
April 25, 2002: Donald Rumsfeld
April 18, 2002: George W. Bush
April 11, 2002: The Rev. Robert J. Banks, archdiocese of Boston
April 5, 2002: George W. Bush
March 29, 2002: Major League Baseball
March 21, 2002: Billy Graham
March 14, 2002: INS commissioner James W. Ziglar
March 8, 2002: Robert Zoellick and the U.S. steel industry
Feb. 28, 2002: Al Sharpton
Feb. 22, 2002: Olympic skating judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne
Feb. 14, 2002: Kenneth Lay
Feb. 8, 2002: Enron spokeswoman Peggy Mahoney
Jan. 31, 2002: Monsanto
Jan. 24, 2002: Linda Chavez
Jan. 17, 2002: George W. Bush
Jan. 10, 2002: Simon & Schuster
Jan. 4, 2002: The Associated Press
(Click here to access the Whopper Archive for 2001.)
