National Review's Byron York makes a point that I've made previously and then takes it a step farther: The fact-checkers aren't neutral.

It’s fair to say that John McCain has taken more heat from the fact-checkers than has Barack Obama, so much so that one prominent analyst has declared that “lies are more central” to McCain’s campaign than to Obama’s.

But if you look at the factchecking of some of the McCain campaign’s most prominent claims, you’ll see that the objections raised are often matters of degree — that McCain claimed that Obama did this or that X number of times, when in fact Obama did it Y number of times — or of tone, or of verb tense. Which leads to the question: What if McCain adjusted his campaign claims to conform to the fact-checkers’ objections? In a number of cases he could easily satisfy their criticisms and still have a devastating attack against Obama. Would they then pronounce those claims accurate?

York concludes with this point that says all you need to know about organizations that are presuming to be the be-all of fact-checking.

Back in July, FactCheck.org wrote that even if McCain and the Republicans accused Obama of voting to raise taxes 54 times — instead of 94 times — FactCheck would still “have plenty to say about it. As we mentioned, most of those were measures to tax the rich or corporations; many aimed to fund government programs; and most didn’t actually raise taxes in and of themselves.” Well, is 54 — FactCheck’s number, not McCain’s — correct or not? Is it, in the end, a fact?

The point of all this is that factchecking reports begin with an analysis of details but end with the factchecker’s opinion of what an ad or speech “implies” or what “impression” it leaves. And that takes the fact-checkers away from the realm of fact.

At last week's debate, one of Sarah Palin's false statements was when she said that Obama had voted to raise taxes on "families" making as little as $42,000 a year. The $42,000 is a "corrected" number -- the original number was $31,500 a year -- the taxable income of an individual making $42,000. Palin should have said "folks" or "people" because those words are accurate. Just that one wrong word gets Palin a handful of Pinnochios.

And Factcheck.org did something similar today in attacking another McCain ad.

A McCain-Palin ad calls Obama "dishonorable," while distorting his words and votes on troop funding.

• It accuses him of saying "our troops in Afghanistan" are just bombing villages and killing civilians. What Obama said, in context, was a criticism of U.S. military strategy, and not of American troops.
• It accuses Obama and "Congressional liberals" of voting repeatedly to cut off funding for troops, "increasing the risk on their lives." In fact, the votes were for bringing the troops home, cutting off funding only if the president failed to comply.

 

Let's start with the first one.

Obama (August 2007): We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there.

At the time, then-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney attacked Obama for the remark. But Obama was on solid ground. As The Associated Press concluded: "As of Aug. 1 [2007], the AP count shows that while militants killed 231 civilians in attacks in 2007, Western forces killed 286. Another 20 were killed in crossfire that can't be attributed to one party." Even President Bush admitted that there were too many civilian casualties, saying: "The president [Afghan president Hamid Karzai] rightly expressed his concerns about civilian casualty. And I assured him that we share those concerns."

You'll recall once again that Palin's mistaken use of "families" rather than "folks" or "people" made her statement false.

Obama's use of "just" makes FactCheck.org's defense of him false. The civilian casualties rates and the comparison of the numbers of civilians killed by U.S. troops versus those killed by the Taliban and al Qaeda are just a smokescreen. The fact is that the terrorists target civilians, U.S. troops don't. U.S. troops end up killing civilians because the terrorists use them as human shields.

Obama has every right to criticize U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, but the Americans troops are not "just air-raiding villages and killing civilians." In fact, air-raiding villages and killing civilians is not U.S. strategy, but Obama's statement implies that it is. That's a slander.

Factcheck.org's second point is also dishonest.

The ad claims that these votes would have been "increasing the risk on their lives," but in fact they were actually votes for winding down the Iraq war. Funding for active duty combat troops in Iraq would have been cut off only if the president failed to comply.

Obama, and the House and Senate Democrats knew the President wasn't going to comply. He'd made that clear long before they voted. Knowing that fact, their vote was in effect to cut off funding for the troops.

When Factcheck.org goes after Democrats, it's an admission against interest. It gives them cover and credibility when they attack Republicans. It's similar to Saturday's move by the New York Times to sorta cover the Obama-terrorist William Ayers connection in such a way as to minimize and obfuscate at the same time they can say that they "covered" the issue and were therefore not journalistically inept.