From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

Brooke Gladstone is away.

I'm Bob Garfield.

Here's an ad that ran recently in Iowa,

paid for by a conservative political action committee called Club for Growth.

What do you think of Howard Dean's plans to raise taxes on families by $1900 a year?

What do I think?

Well, I think Howard Dean should take his tax hiking, government expanding, latte drinking, sushi eating, Volvo driving, New York Times reading.

Body piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont where it belongs.

Got it? Okay, it's funny in a hateful sort of way. But as one of our listeners points out,

like many political ads, it is factually suspect. According to Thomas Summerall of Norwich,

Vermont, a quick series of web searches

confirmed that Vermont has only three sushi restaurants in the whole state, 23 tattoo

parlors compared to Iowa's 89, and incredibly only two Starbucks. So if Howard Dean is an elitist, he's being one a long cultural

way from the Upper East Side. By no means, though, do right-wingers have the monopoly on

political nastiness and spin? So now comes a website, sponsored by the Annenberg Public Policy

Center, providing due diligence on false and misleading claims, Republican and Democrat, left and right.

It is called factcheck.org and its director is former CNN political correspondent Brooks Jackson.

He joins me now. Brooks, welcome to O.TM. Thank you, Bob. Glad to be here.

Factcheck.org is a great idea and a wonderful service to journalists in the public, but sort of a misnomer, isn't it?

Because politicians often use nominal facts out of context to float all kinds of misimpressions and lies.

So you're not just checking facts, are you?

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