Hmm. Read Al Franken's book. Looked at the websites, expecting some amusement.
Got to say, if those are the "lies", they really shouldn't've bothered. In fact, lyingliar.com is really quite pathetic. It's like it's trying to do what Franken did, but really, really, really badly. And that's just the comedic side. On the factual side, whereas Franken notes several places where people actually lie, lyingliar shows a lot of linguistic manipulation (which is true) and calls it lying (which is false). Franken comes across as reaching sometimes in his book, but this site comes across as reaching...all the time.
So, I give lyingliar, uh, 3/10.
Frankenlies could use a site design, but seems a little bit better. It's not trying to be funny, and just presents the facts. Granted, some of its facts are contradicted by the sources it itself gives (eg, the Willie Horton one, where the Brown University source makes it pretty clear that the NSPAC was working closely with the Bush campaign). But, then, some of the sources seem to come from NewsMax.com.
And, uh, far be it from me to say that NewsMax.com may _lie_, but, uh, how to put this delicately...
Let's take an example. Clinton and bin Laden. NewsMax.com claims to have a tape of Clinton saying, quote:
Quote:
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Mr. Bin Laden used to live in Sudan ... And we’d been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start meeting with them again. They released him. At the time, '96, he had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America.
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Powerful stuff. If you google for, say,
"because we had no basis on which to hold him" clinton
You'll find lots of hits. The NewsMax site itself, and lots of smalltime sites that link to the NewsMax sites. Oddly missing from this are, uh, any real sites. There's no news sites in there (No msnbc, no cnn, no foxnews even), nor any biggy Republican sites (no Rush Limbaugh, no Ann Coulter, etc).
I find that surprising. I'd think that any news organization would want to report on something so big. I'd think any conservative pundit would love to crucify Clinton for that, especially considering that the Clinton administration thought Osama was behind the first WTC bombings, and that Bill Clinton signed an assassination orderr for Osama.
So, I've got to assume that NewsMax is, to say it politely, making it all up.
On other points (Florida voting, the Maryland flier), though, I think they're more on the ball. Nothing comes close to some of the stuff in Franken's book -- it's mostly references themselves that couldn't be trusted, like, cough, NewsMax, cough) -- but that's still something.
I give frankenlies about 6.5/10.
And I'm glad there are people who fact check Franken. I wish they'd cast a wider net, though.