Thanks to the Internet, there are lots of rumors and misinformation landing in people’s e-mailboxes – and some of them wind up in ours in the form of irate letters to the editor. Fortunately, there are Web sites devoted to debunking Internet rumors (and confirming those stories that are true). When I hear from someone who claims that President-elect Obama’s birth certificate isn’t valid, or calling for a boycott of Pepsi for having allegedly removed the words “under God” from a patriotic soda-can design, the Web sites I turn to most often are www.snopes.com and www.truthorfiction.com. On each, you will find a summary of the rumor, an example of how the rumor is being circulated, and what the actual facts are.

One example: a persistent writer from Yonkers has sent several letters over the years denouncing Sen. Hillary Clinton for refusing to meet with a delegation of Gold Star Mothers, women whose sons or daughters were killed in U.S. military combat. However, the story simply isn’t true. Truthorfiction traces the rumor to a story on the NewsMax.com Web site in May 2001 claiming that “Gold Star Mothers New York chapter president Shirley Jones and member Mary Wheeler were in Washington D.C. visiting the offices of U.S. senators but ‘The only office that refused to meet with the New York Gold Star Mothers was none other than New York Senator Hillary Clinton. She and her staff simply refused to meet with them.’ The National President of The American Gold Star Mothers, Georgianna Carter-Krell, told TruthOrFiction.com, however, that the two mothers did not have an appointment with Senator Clinton and that, it turns out, she wasn’t even in her office that day.”

Someone else wrote in to note that, according to a study by the Lovenstein Institute, President Bush has the lowest IQ (at 91) of any president in the last 50 years. Turns out this story was nothing but a hoax, but, according to Snopes, at least two newspapers, The Guardian in London and the Southland Times in New Zealand, fell for it and published the hoax as a real story.

So, please, before you fire off that letter of outrage, check to see if there’s any truth to the rumor!