Rep. Michelle Bachmann v. the Facts: Minnesota Republican Fails the Test

AtlTulsa likes to think of itself as a reality-based blog. In plainer English, that means we try very hard to work with facts as we try to get to the Larger Truth of Things.

Would that others would do them same, especially our brothers and sisters on the conservative side of the aisle. Sadly, the Right is a wonderland of misinformation, rumor, speculation, paranoia and the like.

Which brings up to Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota, Exhibit A in rhetorical excess and pure unadulterated baloney. She's all bluster and screed, unanchored to anything resembling actual, observable facts.

But don't take our word for it. Rep. Bachmann has been keeping the fact checkers busy, as this report from her home state makes clear:

Over the past year, Bachmann has often criticized President Barack Obama, the newly enacted health care law and the growing federal deficit. She comes armed with assertions, figures and graphs to make her point.

But independent fact checkers find that the information she relies on is often exaggerated, misleading or wrong. PolitiFact, a Pulitzer Prize-winning feature of the St. Petersburg Times that checks whether statements made by politicians are true, has repeatedly determined that Bachmann's claim don't ring true.

"We have checked her 13 times, and seven of her claims to be false and six have been found to be ridiculously false," PolitiFact editor Bill Adair said.

Adair said no politician has been checked as often as Bachmann without saying at least something that's true

"I don't know anyone else that we have checked, more than a couple times, that has never earned anything above a false," he said. "She is unusual in that regard that she has never gotten a rating higher than false."