Are you now or have you ever been?

Provocative labels fly these days like “liberal” used to be lofted–often.

PolitiFact Oregon, for instance, explored whether a blogger accurately labeled two U.S. House members as socialists. Other PolitiFact teams followed up with looks at their own state’s members on the same list. We saw smoke.

This week, we looked into Texas U.S. Senate candidate Ted Cruz’s claim that another Republican hopeful, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, dubbed Cruz a Chinese Communist. We’ve no idea if “Red Ted” sticks as a nickname. But we rate Cruz’s claim Mostly True.