Checking the facts from ABC’s ‘This Week’

Sunday’s edition of ABC’s This Week had lots of interesting claims to check. We’ve completed two Truth-O-Meter items on the show and have two others in the works.

We rated Sen. John Kerry’s claim that the United States uses more imported oil than it did before 9/11. The truth of that depends on which measurement you use, but we found he was right by two of the three most common measurements. Kerry earned a Mostly True.

Markos Moulitsas urged us to write a Truth-O-Meter item on his slip about Turkey being an Arab country. (It is not an Arab nation.) We accepted his challenge and gave him a False. (But no wag of the finger here; he earns a tip of the hat for being so quick to point out his mistake.)

Sen. John Kerry made it sound like there was unanimity in the studies of his cap-and-trade bill. But we found few researchers had actually examined his particular bill and that there was plenty of disagreement about the underlying concept. He earned a False.

We’ve got two and possibly three other items in the works, including one on Kerry’s claim about studies on the impact of his climate bill, and another one on the disagreement between Arianna Huffington and Liz Cheney about Halliburton. Check the site later today or tomorrow for those items.