[via POLITIFACT] USA TODAY: Some August town hall meetings around the country have degenerated into furious shouting matches, driven by outrageous misinformation borne of many sources. The Internet spreads anonymous chain e-mails to a public that is both vulnerable and gullible. Groups with a financial or ideological interest give the rumors a boost. Talk radio provides an echo chamber for the demonizers. […] The distortions have become so numerous that they’ve often won Politifact.org’s “pants on fire” award (as in “liar, liar, pants on fire”). So in the interest of correcting some of the misinformation, here are a few truths […]

TALKING POINTS MEMO: It now looks like the forged “Kenyan” Obama birth certificate that was briefly promoted by the Birthers — actually an altered copy of a decades-old South Australian birth certificate — was deliberately designed as a prank on the Birther movement itself, Dave Weigel reports. An anonymous person has put up an Internet posting showing photos of the document, against a bedsheet background that matches the photo promoted by Orly Taitz. One of the photos shows a crumpled up certificate with the following message written on it: “YOU’VE BEEN PUNK’D!” MORE [via FEARLESS BLOGGING] Fine cotton business paper: […]

[Photo by ANDRES] THE GUARDIAN: For a time, Baitullah Mehsud [picutured, below right] appeared to have cloaked himself in the historical garb of the Faqir of Ipi, a militant cleric whom British colonial troops spent much of the 1930s and ’40s chasing through the mountain passes of Waziristan. “They sought him here, they sought him there, those columns sought him everywhere,” went an old British couplet that equally applied to Mehsud as he shrugged off efforts by Pakistani and, more recently, US forces to kill him. In June a CIA-operated drone fired a barrage of missiles at a funeral for […]

NATION: A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince [pictured, right], may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the […]

NEW YORK TIMES: SEOUL, South Korea — The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, pardoned two jailed American journalists, the official KCNA news agency has reported, according to Reuters. The report came after former President Bill Clinton met with the reclusive and ailing Mr. Kim in Pyongyang on Tuesday. Mr. Kim granted “a special pardon,” KCNA said in a statement. It was not clear how rapidly the two journalists, Laura Ling, 32, and Euna Lee, 36, might be allowed to leave the country. They were being held near Pyongyang after having been sentenced to 12 years at hard labor for entering […]

[Illustration by SEAN KELLY] BOSTON GLOBE: Barack Obama turned 48 today, bringing to an end a huge year for the commander in chief, one in which he accepted his party’s nomination, handily won the general election, and took office as the nation’s first African-American president. MORE CHUCK NORRIS: Mr. President, as more and more people realize that you are refusing to release your original birth certificate, further questions will fuel the fires of debate or at least hinder the embers from ever being snuffed out. Questions such as, “Does it really contain the Hawaiian physician’s name?” “Does it disclose something […]

[Illustration by ALEX FINE] PHILLY CLOUT: One of the strange ironies we’ve noted in the budget process is that Philadelphia is currently poised to make massive citywide cuts at the same time the federal government is pledging to send the city millions of dollars as part of the $787 billion stimulus package. But here’s the rub. Nearly all the money coming from the feds is dedicated for very specific purposes and cannot go to general operating expenses. So if the city’s budget requests in Harrisburg don’t go as planned, and Mayor Nutter implements his “Plan C” doomsday budget, then the […]

NEW YORK TIMES: Former President Bill Clinton landed in North Korea on Tuesday to negotiate the release of two American television journalists sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for illegally entering North Korean territory, according to a person briefed on the mission. Citing television footage from Pyongyang, The Associated Press said Mr. Clinton was greeted at the airport by North Korean officials including the chief nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan and Yang Hyong-sop, vice parliamentary speaker. The footage showed him smiling and bowing as a young girl presented him with flowers. The reported presence of the nuclear negotiator raised the […]

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