June 4, 2010

Mark Kirk Misremembers It Wrong

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Aside from its entertainment value, I haven’t been all that interested in the recent brouhahas surrounding politicos who have made false claims about their military service. Richard Blumenthal actually appears to have misrepresented his record only once or twice over a ten-year period, Jan Brewer’s exaggeration about her father was a political misdemeanor at worst, and Mark Kirk…..

Um, yeah. Mark Kirk. The Republican Senate candidate from Illinois. That whole “Intelligence Officer of the Year” thing was pretty embarrassing, and he’s finally apologized for it, but today Steve Benen rounds up Kirk’s entire record:

At this point, it’s genuinely difficult to keep track of all of Kirk’s claims about his service record that have been proven false. Let’s see if I have them all: Kirk (1) falsely claimed he served “in” Operation Iraqi Freedom; (2) falsely claimed to “command the war room in the Pentagon”; (3) falsely claimed to have won the U.S. Navy’s Intelligence Officer of the Year award; (4) falsely claimed to have been shot at by the Iraqi Air Defense network; (5) falsely claimed to be a veteran of Desert Storm; and (6) falsely claimed to be the only lawmaker to serve during Operation Iraqi Freedom. There may very well be other instances, but these six are confirmed.

The Chicago Sun-Times version is here. Kirk says that in the future “I need to be humble about my military record.” Roger that.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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