Speaking of truth, because the media in general is doing such a wretched job of fact-checking the statements of candidates, focusing instead on the horse-race/beauty pageant aspects of the election season, FactCheck.org is really a must-read after every debate.

Seek truth, not truthiness!

For instance, Gov. Romney tried to rewrite the history of the start of the Iraq War, but FactCheck.org called him on it: (and they are just as vigilant on Democrats!)

• Romney Rewrites History

  Romney tried to pin the blame for the Iraq war on Saddam Hussein’s refusal to allow weapons inspections.

      Romney: [I]f you’re saying let’s turn back the clock, and Saddam Hussein had opened up his country to IAEA inspectors, and they’d come in and they’d found that there were no weapons of mass destruction, had Saddam Hussein, therefore, not violated United Nations resolutions, we wouldn’t be in the conflict we’re in. But he didn’t do those things, and we knew what we knew at the point we made the decision to get in.

  Romney is not alone in playing loose with the facts about weapons inspections. On at least three occasions, President Bush has made the same claim. The first, on July 14, 2003:

Media Matters for America conducted a study of news coverage of major religious figures to assess whether opinions of politically conservative religious leaders were represented more prominently and more frequently than the opinions of politically progressive religious leaders. Of course, the results of their study were not unpredictable. After all, Media Matters is a politically progressive site looking to document media bias and/or dishonesty in favor of politically conservative ideologies. They went into the study expecting such a bias would result in over-representation of politically conservative religious leaders. I'll take that to be what it is.

The results of the study were overwhelming. While 90% of Americans identify as religious, only 22% identify as belonging to traditionalist faith communities. Yet conservative religious leaders are represented in television media 3.8 times as often as progressive religious leaders; and conservative religious leaders are represented in major newspapers 2.7 times as often as progressive religious leaders.

Sidebar: I think the numbers identifying representation of the respective religious leaders informative and important in-and-of themselves. Contrasting those numbers with the statistics representing who the general population identify as is not entirely helpful. Here is why: I belong to what I presume Media Matters would identify as a traditionalist faith community; yet I self-identify as politically progressive -- though I most certainly mean progressive in a different way than Media Matters does. This contrast implies both a bias and a conclusion on the part of Media Matters that goes beyond what the numbers themselves convey.

One of the greatest problems with blogging is that it is too easy to rant without thinking; and the rant becomes public domain. The consequence is, of course, you find yourself writing things you did not intend to say; at least publicly. I do that, myself, all the time; though I am trying to develop more discipline in that area.

So here we are gearing up for a new Presidential campaign (though, for the life of me, I cannot figure out why we're doing it so early). One of the Presidential hopefuls has already gotten into hot water with the Catholic League; see here and here.

It appears that two bloggers John Edwards hired has some anti-Catholic sentiments. John Edwards gave an apology. In Edwards' statement, he said:

they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone's faith, and I take them at their word.