Latest Stories By W. Gardner Selby

We love it when a reader claim touches off our hunt for facts.

That’s what happened when Christine Gilbert of Austin wrote that the Texas Capitol faces south to honor a battle at Goliad. Not so, we concluded, though Goliad was invoked at the Capitol’s dedication.

READ OUR CAPITOL FACT CHECK HERE.

Readers subsequently nudged that we missed a possible explanation; they speculated the building was erected facing south to catch the winds off the Gulf of Mexico. Details ahead...

Donald Trump says he heard there could be 34 million U.S. "illegals."

PANTS ON FIRE, PolitiFact Florida found.

NEW: Pundit correctly says majority of Hispanic residents in the country were born in the U.S.

As of 2012, according to a federal agency, some 11.4 million residents lived in the country without legal authorization. Others put the number between 11 million and 12 million. MORE AHEAD:

As a candidate, Greg Abbott said the state should encourage quality preschool offerings and beef up math and reading instruction in early grades.

Before the 2015 legislative session ended this June, he signed several relevant measures into law.

On the Abbott-O-Meter, which tracks progress on the governor's campaign promises, we’re marking KEPT five Abbott campaign promises relating to early childhood education.

What happens when fact-checkers from around the globe gather in a single room in London? We've got your Twitter live feed.

In 2014, we found no substance to a claim John Cornyn dodged the draft.

Did Donald Trump dodge? PolitiFact just lofted a jump ball.

SEE THE TRUMP STORY HERE. SEE THE CHECK PER JOHN CORNYN HERE.

NEW: See our story showing tweets from the 2015 global fact-checking summit in London, HERE.

Flashback time: In 2011, we rated False a claim the first word spoken from the moon was "Houston."

First word? Maybe "contact light."

Read the original fact check here.

A reader didn't like our not calling border crossers "illegal aliens," also objecting to our references to "unauthorized residents."

Some word choices are a matter of Associated Press style.

Did Muslims attempt to open a Sharia court in Irving, Texas?

A reader asked us to check that out.

FALSE.

Our check into a HALF TRUE Doonesbury claim about Greg Abbott tracking the Jade Helm 15 military exercise drew the most reader views in June.

Our reviews of claims by the Midland County sheriff, Abbott himself and Austin City Council Member Don Zimmerman also made our top six reader favorites for the month.

The baseball saying is wait til next year. Greg Abbott has said wait til 2017 for lawmakers to revisit his ethics campaign promises.

Now we've marked those Abbott promises as BROKEN.

See the entire Abbott-O-Meter here.

We may be making Ted Cruz sick.

That seems to be what the Texas senator and Republican presidential candidate thinks about PolitiFact and our fact checks, according to his just-published book, "A Time for Truth."

Cruz calls PolitiFact a "new, particularly noxious species of yellow journalism that is beginning to infect what passes for modern political discourse." And there’s more.

See Cruz’s full Truth-O-Meter report card here. COMMENT on our Facebook page.

Greg Abbott said a measure he signed into law returns $1 billion in gold bullion to Texas from the Federal Reserve.

MOSTLY FALSE, we found.