The Pulitzer Prize-winning website Politifact waded into Illinois' U.S. Senate race this week and found that GOP nominee Mark Kirk has been stretching the truth.  Specifically, they highlighted his campaign's claim in a recent ad that Giannoulias aide Endy Zemenides "was a longtime BP lobbyist" as "barely true." 

The real story here is that Zemenides was previously a registered lobbyist for a BP subsidiary that focused on setting up gas stations in the Chicago area.  Politifact concluded: "It's one thing to be an attorney handling landscaping and zoning issues for a company developing retail gas stations; quite another to lobby for lax federal legislation on deepwater oil drilling. The Kirk ad makes too much of very little."

The site also examined two separate ads from the Kirk and Giannoulias campaigns.  See what they found here.