Stories

While one might have expected the nation to recover some civility after the mudslinging of the 2008 campaign season, the year instead saw the rise of the “just asking” paranoid style on Fox News, the return of serial health care misinformer Betsy McCaughey, and South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson screaming “You lie!” at the president [...]

Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize winning Web site operated by the St. Petersburg Times, has picked its “Lie of the Year,” and U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, played a part in spreading it.
The lie that stood out above all other in 2009, according to Politifact, was a Republican talking point that end-of-life planning provisions included in [...]

He may not be officially in the 2010 gubernatorial race yet, but former Gov. Terry Branstad’s voice is officially on an automated call being received this week in eastern Iowa.

The health care reform bill passed Saturday night by the U.S. House requires the government to encourage suicide, according to U.S. Rep. Steve King.
While walking away from the U.S. Capitol, King, a Republican from Kiron, said page 644 of the health care bill says the government must “encourage the promotion of suicide or assisted [...]

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley is taking heat for touting his opposition to health care reform legislation to a group of donors at a Miami fundraiser last week.

In an attempt to figure out how he went from Democrats’ only hope for a bipartisan health care reform bill to the guy convincing constituents the government wanted to “pull the plug on grandma,” Time Magazine takes a look at U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley’s long, strange summer.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley should have denounced what was essentially a threat of violence issued at a town hall forum, a Washington, D.C.,-based gun-control organization said Tuesday.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence was responding to an exchange Grassley had with a constituent in Pocahontas Monday. The man, who identified himself as Tom Eisenhower, said [...]

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley continues to deliver a mixed message about his widely publicized statement that the government would have the authority to “pull the plug on grandma” under a Democratic health care reform bill.

Despite repeatedly defending an untrue claim he made last week about a provision in a House health care reform bill, a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley told the Washington Post Saturday that he doesn’t really believe what he told constituents about a government-mandated euthanasia program.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley has been taking a lot of heat for continuing to spread the debunked rumor that end-of-life planning provisions included in proposed health care legislation could lead to government-mandated euthanasia of the elderly, going as far as to strip them from a version of the bill currently before his committee.
But Amy Sullivan [...]