Campaign 2008

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chatterbox
columns

Fun With Bailout Numbers
The financial pages discover the word quadrillion.
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posted Oct. 9, 2008
The New Complacency
Democrats relearn how to take the presidency for granted.
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posted Oct. 7, 2008
Not Using Wright, McCain-Style
"Oh, we can't control her. She's just the vice-presidential candidate."
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posted Oct. 6, 2008
Alaska vs. Hawaii
Why is Seward's Folly the "real America" and the Aloha State not?
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posted Oct. 3, 2008
Sarah Palin's College Daze
Why did she attend five different colleges?
Timothy Noah
posted Oct. 1, 2008
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chatterbox: Gossip, speculation, and scuttlebutt about politics.

Whopper of the Week: Orrin Hatch

By Timothy Noah
Posted Thursday, Dec. 20, 2001, at 5:49 PM ET

"Now, I don't mean in any way to suggest that we should not be performing appropriate oversight, or to suggest ill motives [italics Chattebox's] behind this hearing today."
—Orrin Hatch, at a Dec. 6 Judiciary Committee hearing about the Bush administration's plans to conduct military tribunals.

"There is a growing concern among the public that these rapid-fire oversight hearings are aimed less at providing information and more at demonizing the administration and our attorney general for partisan purposes [italics Chatterbox's]."
—Hatch at a Dec. 4 Judiciary Committee hearing on the same topic, as reported by ABCNews.com.

Got a whopper? Send it to . 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:
Dec. 13: Osama Bin Laden
Dec. 7, 2001: Henry Kissinger
Nov. 30, 2001: Council on American-Islamic Relations
Nov. 23, 2001: Bud Selig
Nov. 16, 2001: Sara Jane Olson
Nov. 9, 2001: Donald Rumsfeld (item includes retraction)
Nov. 2, 2001: Dick Armey
Oct. 26, 2001: Gale Norton
Oct. 19, 2001: State Department Deputy Spokesman Philip Reeker
Oct. 12, 2001: Clarence Thomas
Oct. 5, 2001: Abdul Salam Zaeef
Sept. 27, 2001: Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer, and Dick Cheney
Sept. 20, 2001: Larry C. Johnson
Sept. 13, 2001: Yasser Arafat
Sept. 7, 2001: Tommy Thompson
Aug. 30, 2001: HHS spokesman Bill Pierce
Aug. 23, 2001: Variety Editor Peter Bart
Aug. 17, 2001: Tom Daschle
Aug 10, 2001: Robert Mueller
Aug. 3, 2001: Barbara Olson
July 27, 2001: Jeffrey Archer
July 20, 2001: George W. Bush
July 13, 2001: George W. Bush
July 6, 2001: Sumner Redstone
June 29, 2001: David Brock
June 22, 2001: Edmund Morris
June 15, 2001: George W. Bush
June 8, 2001: Nepali Prince Regent (subsequently, King) Gyanendra
June 1, 2001: Mary McGrory
May 25, 2001: Ari Fleischer
May 18, 2001: York, Pa., Mayor Charles Robertson
May 11, 2001: Ted Olson
May 4, 2001: Rear Adm. Craig Quigley
April 27, 2001: Ben Affleck
April 20, 2001: South Carolina state legislator Chip Limehouse
April 13, 2001: Gray Davis
April 6, 2001: Sumner Redstone
March 30, 2001: Spencer Abraham
March 23, 2001: George W. Bush, Rep. Jennifer Dunn, and/or the Treasury Department
March 16, 2001: George W. Bush
March 9, 2001: Russ Freyman, spokesman, National Association of Manufacturers
March 2, 2001: Paul O'Neill
Feb. 23, 2001: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
Feb. 16, 2001: Oscar spokesman John Pavlik
Feb. 9, 2001: Lynne Cheney
Feb. 2, 2001: Bobby Thomson
Jan. 26, 2001: Denise Rich