I'm sure many of you watched last night's Republican debate. Since we have spent a fair amount of time at this blog discussing the importance of facts, and how they are often abused, I thought you might be interested in some "fact-checking" on last night's debate.
I'm fond of Politifact, the Pulitzer-prize-winning effort of the St. Petersburg Times. They try to steer a middle-of-the-road course and delight in nailing politicians of both parties when they don't let the facts get in the way of making an argument. Here's the link to their effort re last night's debate:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2011/sep/07/fact-checking-reagan-library-debate/
The Washington Post also has a fact-checking column, and you will find that they checked some statements that Politifact did not, and vice versa. Here's their link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/fact-checking-the-gop-debate-at-the-reagan-library/2011/09/07/gIQAFrz5AK_blog.html?hpid=z1
Personally, the statement that made the evening for me was from Gov. Perry. In defending his position that climate change science is "unsettled," he noted that "Galileo was outvoted for a spell."
Having taught about Galileo for a few decades, I found this an interesting slant.
What Gov. Perry failed to mention was that those fun folks who "outvoted" Galileo were a large group of religious fundamentalists who had both religious and secular power, and were convinced that the Bible told them the correct position to take relative to whether the Sun orbited the Earth or vice versa.
Thankfully, we do not face this situation in our modern world.
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